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Volvo Ocean Race
Picture © Ian Mainsbridge. News Corporation beats to windward during last year's brutal Sydney to Hobart - a training run for this year's Volvo Ocean Race. Expect plenty more wet deck action when eight challenging yachts head around the world from September 23. Subtle skills will win this race But first, a little history ... Global yacht racing is no longer the unique event it once was. For solo sailors aboard Open 60 monohulls there is the Vendee Globe and the Around Alone. For crewed multihulled yachts there is The Race. But this recent phenomenon all started with the 1973-74 Whitbread 'Round the World race - now called the Volvo Ocean Race. The Volvo Ocean Race will start from Southampton, England on September 23rd 2001. This professionally crewed event will cover 32,700 nautical miles in approximately ten months, circumnavigating the world, generally with the prevailing winds. The nine-leg race will visit 10 ports, racing through four oceans, and finish in Kiel, Germany in June 2002. It is nothing like racing 'round the bouys. Has this race been inspired by the trading routes of narrow clipper ships, or perhaps the last, great grain races? No doubt. Equally, it is an evolution of modern sailing. While the trading ships of sail have all but faded into obscurity, the need for ocean adventure has not. Joshua Slocum was the first single-handed circumnavigator and boy, oh boy did he communicate his adventure well. That man alone has inspired thousands to take to the sea. Sir Francis Chichester promoted the sport well too, and his 1966-67 circumnavigation aboard the Gypsy Moth IV inspired the Golden Globe solo circumnavigation challenge of 1968-69. Sir Robin Knox-Johnston won that endurance race, while fellow competitor, French legend Bernard Moitessier, never came home. He kept sailing to Tahiti after refusing to head north up the Atlantic and his passion for the sea, like Slocum's, inspired a whole new generation of sailors. This is the history of the Whitbread and its early races were really a celebration of ocean living. The legs between ports were long and endearing. The crews of some legend maxi yachts truly enjoyed their trip abroad and the parties at Cape Town and Auckland were the stuff of legend. The making of great sailors ... Professional sailors from right around the globe built up their credentials in the Whitbread. Sir Peter Blake, who sailed Enza to a new Jules Verne record won his last Whitbread in the Kiwi max ketch Steinlager II. Skip Novak, skipper of Drake Passage explorer Pelagic and recent co-skipper of Innovation Explorer - which placed second in The Race - discovered his love for the Southern Ocean during a Whitbread tour. During one race, when salt ice and snow plastered the cockpit like concrete render, Novak scrawled some poignant words in the medium with his finger. It read, quite simply: 'I love the Southern Ocean!' During the 1993-4 Whitbread, a new breed of yacht emerged to challenge the maxi class - the Whitbread 60, designed by Bruce Farr and Associates. While Grant Dalton's impressive ketch New Zealand Endeavour - also designed by Farr - won that event, by a narrow margin to Ross Field's Whitbread 60 Yamaha, the end of an era loomed. Come 1997-'98, every entry sailed in a Whitbread 60 and many campaigns trained with two boats. All of a sudden the Whitbread was becoming the America's Cup of offshore racing. A new era in ocean weather routing! For better, or worse - and some of those old Whitbread hands would have you believe it the latter - this new age of ocean racing has well and truly arrived. The competition is unbelievably close and the tactics are, in many ways, more conservative than ever. Gone are the days of the 'flyer' when one yacht might break free from the fleet to seek a meteorological advantage in another corner of the ocean. Flyers don't work when yachts finish within minutes of each other after 2000 miles of sailing. What we are seeing now is a very subtle approach to weather routing and ocean sailing. As Nautor Challenge's router Roger Badham explains: "You win a yacht race by predicting wind shifts and understanding subtleties on a minute and hourly basis. And of course, you've got to have it right at the big picture level before you can look at the next level down." But the Volvo Ocean Race will continue to push the boundaries of weather forecasting. What we are seeing here is hands-on meteorology like never before. Thanks to all the modern gadgets - the QuickScat wind files, the incredibly detailed and accurate computer modeling - sailors are seeing weather in remarkable detail. Those that understand that detail best and use it to their advantage will win this race. Nobody wins nothin' without being the best ... Of course, nobody wins nothin' without being the best sailors on the block. and even the best sailors need the best boats. All of that is here amongst the seven challengers in the Volvo. With short legs scoring the same as long legs, this race could come down to the wire - and that means the outright winner might even be decided on the last overnight leg from Goteborg to Kiel! Mark Rudiger, winning navigator from the last Whitbread and co-skipper of this year's entry Assa Abloy hopes it does not - because that leg is full of windless holes and nasty surprises. If solid support and lots of practice are anything to bet on - put your money on Illbruck, headed by US Soling silver medalist John Kostecki. This talented team has been working so hard for so long they've decided to enter the America's Cup after the Volvo! If it's experience you're after, then you can't go past Nautor's (Amer Sports One) skipper Grant Dalton, veteran of five Whitbread races. Perhaps more experienced is Dalton's Swedish navigator, Roger Nilson, a veteran of six Whitbread campaigns - the first aboard Skip Novak's Alaska Eagle in 1981-82. Nilson's last project was also with Novak, aboard Innovation Explorer in The Race, second to Dalton's Club Med. The trouble with this talented team is that it was left too late. If Illbruck is the pinnacle of team cohesiveness, Nautor must rank at the other end of the scale. Nautor is also hosting an all-female boat, Amer Sports Too, similar to what EF did in the last Whitbread. One crew member from EF Education, Lisa MacDonald is skipper of the female Nautor boat. No doubt the talent on this yacht is world class, but it really is a shame there aren't other all-female boats to compete against. Meanwhile, Team SEB bristles with hard-core experience in the form of skipper Gunnar Krantz (ex-Swedish Match) and navigator Marcel Van Triest (ex-Innovation Kvaerner). Knut Frostad, skipper of Innovation Kvaerner in the last Whitbread showed tremendous promise and has returned as skipper of Norway's Djuice Dragons with legend navigator Jean Yves Bernot. Also on-board will be America's Cup skipper Ed Baird (Stars and Stripes). In addition, both boats built for the Djuice campaign were designed by former Team New Zealand America's Cup design guru Laurie Davidson - a radical departure from most Volvo campaigns, which elected to stay with the designers who invented the Volvo 60: Bruce Farr and Associates. Team Tyco sports Kiwi Kevin Shoebridge as skipper (Steinlager and New Zealand Endeavour) with navigator Steve Hayles (Silk Cut, Dolphin and Youth). Mike Quilter, Dalton's long-time navigator, will act as advisor to this team while in port.
The Fastnet race in August was the last training event for most of the teams.
While the outcome of this race typically proves nothing (Paul Cayard and EF
Language did poorly in the 1997 event but won the Whitbread in grand style), it
is interesting to note that Jez Fanstone and News Corporation pipped Illbruck at
the post to take line honours in the Volvo 60 class.
Will News Corporation pip Illbruck on the last leg to Kiel? Keep in touch with this great event over the next nine to ten months. It's simply too good to miss! © Jamie Brown/weather-wise.com 2001 |