Dongfeng aim to get Chinese recipe with local flavour in Volvo Ocean Race

The French skipper of the Dongfeng boat has four Chinese characters tattooed on his torso. They were there, for all to see, as a shirtless Charles Caudrelier posed for the cover photo of the July edition of France’s Le Journal du Nautisme, ahead of the Volvo Ocean Race.

He said he got the tattoo “so long ago that I do not remember” what the characters mean. However, as skipper of a Chinese-sponsored yacht with grandiose plans and a tenderfoot pedigree, the symbols should be etched in his brain with equally indelible ink.

The symbols, when translated, relate specifically to teamwork: “We are all on the same boat.”

The story of the Dongfeng team’s formation is worth retelling. It is about a team fusing six veteran European endurance sailors with two eager Chinese novices, all of them working towards a common goal in this race – as well as a six-year goal of an all-Chinese crew.

As Dongfeng held the lead through the Cape Verde Islands yesterday, in Leg 1 of the race, Caudrelier and his Europeans are the veteran hands on deck. The two Chinese crewmen are like sponges, soaking up as much saltwater savvy as they can.

“We have six sailors,” said Dongfeng team director Bruno Dubois, “and two apprentices.”

After committing to compete in the 2014/15 Volvo race, the team invited interested Chinese nationals to apply for spots on the crew.

Two hundred applications were received, including CVs from fishermen, a former Olympic rower and a man with one arm. The long-term plan is to sail an all-Chinese boat in the VOR, six years from now.

But before Dubois could shape a legacy, he had to whittle down the list of applicants and find enough seaworthy bodies to get him through the 2014/15 iteration.

China has dabbled in major offshore sailing in the past. In the 2008/09 VOR, a joint Chinese/Irish venture called the Green Dragon, led by current Abu Dhabi Ocean Racing skipper Ian Walker, finished fifth. In 2011/12, a boat backed by the city of Sanya finished last among six boats. This time, with Chinese commercial lorry-maker Dongfeng providing the sponsorship money, the team developed an incremental yet ambitious plan to develop an all-Chinese boat in time for the 2020/21 race.

China is a nation with 1.4 billion residents, a significant maritime history and 14,500 kilometres of coastline, but scant history in endurance sailing.

The Chinese sailors would be identified after Dubois found individuals with an affinity for the VOR’s nine months of ritual deprivation. Just as the fleet of Volvo 65 boats were built from scratch before the race, so, too, would the six-man Chinese contingent on the Dongfeng roster.

Team officials reviewed the applications and in December culled the list to 20 candidates, who were invited to a two-day tryout in the port city of Sanya, where the Volvo race is set to arrive in March.

The hopefuls all had some form of sailing experience, though not on Volvo-calibre yachts.

They arrived at the Serenity Marina, a title that ought to conjure laughs someday, with their creature comforts in tow.

“They came with luggage, saying: ‘Where’s my room’?” Dubois said, laughing. “We told them: ‘Don’t worry, you won’t need a room.’ Right away, we wanted to see how they would react to this sort of thing.”

Like being on a rolling deck in the open sea, the tryout camp was an exercise in keeping the volunteers off balance. The idea was to separate the dogged from the daunted. Creativity was just as crucial.

“It was a great plan,” said Wang “Wolf” Jiru, who made the cut and is sailing with Caudrelier at the moment. “Which doesn’t mean it was fun.”

Over the course of testing, the would-be crewmen were subjected to physical and mental duress that left them weary and bleary.

A sampling:

* The candidates were tossed in frigid water and told to swim to a fixed point, while maintaining physical contact at all times with four other paddling sailors. The implication being, the unit was only as strong as its weakest link.

* They were divided into groups, led to the beach and directed to a pile of bamboo and rope. Build a raft, they were told. A couple of them capsized, though Dubois did not much care. “The main thing was to see how they worked together,” he said.

* In another team-building drill, the men were told to build and erect a sailing mast in the sand, another bamboo concoction that had to stand upright on its own.

“We found who are the leaders, who are the followers and who are the ones who give orders,” Dubois said. “I didn’t want somebody giving orders. I want leaders who say, ‘This is my idea, what do you think, and is this something we can do together’?”

* The candidates were allowed to sleep for 20 or 30 minutes, then rudely awakened, simulating the rigours of a Volvo environment. When they were allowed to eat, it was freeze-dried fare identical to what sailors ingest during the round-the-world race. The notion of sustenance over style went beyond the dinner table.

* They were ordered to run through the streets of Sanya, where Dubois had positioned a network of spies. Some candidates took shortcuts. “I said to myself, ‘Oops, that’s not good, that guy’s a cheater’,” Dubois said. “He is cheating himself, so he will cheat the team, too.”

For Wang, perhaps the toughest part came towards the end when, after 36 mostly sleepless hours, officials hauled the would-be endurance sailors into a room and gave them a 1,000-piece jigsaw puzzle to reassemble. His brain by then had all but flatlined, but he flipped the puzzle over and assembled the pieces by looking at the shapes, not the colours.

“The idea was to see how they would react if they had to go 30 hours, 32 hours, without sleep, which they might have to do on the boat,” said Dubois, a Frenchman. “Are they still smiling? Can they still think on their feet?”

A second tryout camp was held a few days later and team officials trimmed the list of Chinese on the 12-man Dongfeng roster to six. Wang and Chen “Horace” Jin Hao earned spots on the boat during the first leg, to Cape Town.

“I think it is the first time anyone has done the Volvo with maybe six months of experience,” Caudrelier said of his Chinese trainees.

“We didn’t miss on the guys we chose. We made good selections. But it takes a long time to become a sailor.”

As if the remedial sailing courses were not enough, the Chinese sailors, before the race began in Spain, were taking nightly courses in English, too, with tutoring provided by a local college professor.

Still, communicating in English with Caudrelier and his countrymen has often been spotty as the crew labour to speak in a common, though universally foreign, tongue. By next July, Dubois hopes to have four experienced Chinese sailors on-board the Dongfeng when it sails across the Volvo finish line in Sweden.

It will not come easily, and the goal of four Chinese crew on the final leg might end up more like two.

Wang began sailing five years ago when he was in college and was bitten by the bug immediately. On his dormitory wall he wrote the words “Volvo Ocean Race” and, as unlikely as it would have seemed then, he has already attained his goal.

Ten months after answering the audition call, Wang, 24, stands at the fore of a potential Chinese sailing renaissance.

Nine days ago, as the fleet prepared to sail from Spain to Cape Town, he seemed overwhelmed at times. At one point, he wept when speaking of a countryman who did not make the eight-man line-up for the Cape Town leg. “I feel some pressure, actually,” Wang said in the Dongfeng hospitality tent.

Two days later, his sense of perspective changed as the big picture came more into focus. China, of course, has the biggest picture frame of them all.

Unlike the symbols the Dongfeng skipper has tattooed on his chest, the Chinese guys know precisely what the race means, to the letter.

“I think I will be very proud one day, when we have a full team of Chinese sailors, that I was with the first group and helped to do it,” Wang said.

Despite their comparative lack of experience, Dongfeng had a 50-mile lead in Leg 1 at midday yesterday. They could be prepared to write a compelling chapter of VOR history.

Dubois, the mix master, smiles.

It all represents the means to a somewhat distant, but potentially satisfying, end. He said: “I tell them all the time, ‘Your life will not be the same after this race’.”

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