Sailing: Nilson relishes secure funding

THE GROWING strength and appeal of the Whitbread Race to sponsors everywhere but in its homeland was underlined yesterday in Amsterdam when the building of a pounds 3m 60-footer was announced by a debt collection agency, Intrum Justitia.

In line with the company's Swedish origins, Roger Nilson, a veteran of three previous Whitbread's will be the skipper of the yacht - designed by Bruce Farr - to be built by Bill Green at Lymington.

Early doubts about the size of the 1993-94 fleet in tough economic times and the appeal of the new 60ft class over the much bigger maxis are evaporating rapidly.

The race's director, Ian Bailey-Willmot, estimated that at least 25 boats would be on the starting line with three new maxis among the 10 overall plus 15 or 16 of the new 60 footers.

So far, only one UK 60ft campaign, the Dolphin project for the disabled, is sure of competing. However, there are grounds for believing that Rothmans may reverse their decision not to back Lawrie Smith for a second time.

Nilson has already recruited a fellow Swede, the America's Cup skipper Gunnar Krantz, French navigator Marcel van Triest and Johan Salen as project manager.

His brief is to try and get a European crew as the boat will fly the 12 starred ensign. He expects there to be 10 European crew members on most legs, perhaps 12 in the southern ocean. Britain will be one of his prospective trawling grounds.

He recognises that, if the number of competing yachts swells, late entrants will not only be under building-time pressure, they may also find the available top crew list depleted.

'We expect to be at the highest level,' he said. 'The whole race has moved several notches upwards, so I am very happy to have a good project, securely funded, now.'