Record smashing run in the VOR

The Volvo Ocean Race may be getting some heat over their race viewer and cumbersome website, but you have to admit; the racing is bloody marvelous. The lead boats expect to arrive in South Africa this weekend after thrashing the length of the North Atlantic in just three weeks. In the old day (by that I mean my days when I was racing professionally) it would take five weeks to cover the same distance and that was on much bigger boats. Add to that Ericsson 4, skippered by the Brazilian sailing star Torben Grael has smashed the 600 mile-per-day barrier for the first time ever by a monohull. Today (Oct 30, ‘08) Ericsson 4 logged a stunning 602.66 nautical miles in 24 hours. That is an average speed of more than 25 knots – AVERAGE. You have to know the boat was sailing 35-plus on occasion. This is insane sailing and they have not even hit the big stuff yet. One wonders what the Southern Ocean will bring.

My guess is that the deep south with its gale force winds and massive seas will not bring much higher speeds. These high performance boats don’t actually need more wind to set records. Sure they need a good breeze, but it’s more about a consistent, steady wind. This allows for the seas to build to a point where they are even and organized. Nothing worse that a building sea and then a sudden cross sea as the wind shifts. The conditions experienced by Ericsson 4 were just right and they smashed their own record set a day earlier, and It eclipsed the previous best 24-hour run for a racing monohull of 562.96 miles set by Sebastian Josse and the crew of ABN AMRO TWO on the second leg of the 2005-06 race from Cape Town to Melbourne.

While the VOR fleet has stretched out to just under 500 miles between the first and last boat, there is not much in it for the first two boats, Ericsson 4 and Puma skippered by Ken Read, Puma being just 76 miles off the pace. That’s 3 hours and anything can happen as the boats close on land. Table Mountain casts a long wind shadow. On two previous round-the-world races I sat in the lee of that magic mountain within spitting distance of the finish line, for more than 6 hours each time. The real interesting race will be between Telefonica Black, Team Russia and Delta Lloyd. Just 25 miles separate them and a lot of bragging rights is at stake. It’s not good for morale to be last into Cape Town.

So while many are griping over the slow-loading 3D Viewer and the fact that the website crashes some machines, I am focussing on the racing and the kind of nerve and stamina it takes to keep a massive boat sailing razor close to the edge of disaster for so long. They are going to deserve a cold Castle Lager or two when they hit the sunny shores of South Africa.

I am a fan of Richard Branson

I am a fan of Richard Branson. I picked up his new book, Business Stripped Bare, at Heathrow airport last week not because I fancy myself as a big businessman, but because I like his style, both of writing and how he has lived his life. Here in the US there is a lot of talk about being a maverick; Branson is a maverick and the people who set off to race around the world in small boats are, for the most part, mavericks.

I bring up Branson because he just made sailing news aboard the 100-foot supersled Virgin Money (real name Speedboat, renamed Virgin Money as Branson and two of his children are paying the bills, but that is an aside). Virgin Money (sounds like an oxymoron to me) is an engineering masterpiece of carbon fiber and just about every other kind of exotic material money can buy in order to to make the boat light, powerful, and by extension, fast. For those of us who find this kind of self-indulgent opulence a modern day version of high art, it warms our hearts and I, for one, love it when billionaires choose to spend their money on a fast sailboat rather than a dull painting to hang on a wall.

Branson and his two grown children joined Virgin Money in New York to ready for an attempt on the west-east transatlantic record. It’s a tough one to beat: 6 days, 17 hours, 52 minutes and 39 seconds, set by the 140-foot Mari Cha IV in 2003. In order to have any chance you need a few things to go right. You need to leave ahead of a front that you hope will carry you well out into the Atlantic and then hook into other systems that will slingshot you across an imaginary finish line off Lizard Point, the most South Westerly point of the UK. 

The team that included the best money can buy had a realistic chance of breaking the record providing they didn’t break the boat. Unfortunately they broke the boat. Well not the boat exactly, but the mainsail, a critical piece of kit. The sail was damaged to the point where continuing the record attempt would have been pointless so they took a hard right and headed for the tropical sanctuary of Bermuda. What a contrast. From the cold, gray windswept North Atlantic to the pink sands of paradise. Not a bad consolation prize.

So, I like Richard Branson. I respect and admire anyone who takes life by the horns and lives it to the fullest. That doesn’t mean we all have to be billionaire adventurers. We can all, in our own way, make a statement about who we are and how we want to live the three score and ten years allotted to us on this planet. Which brings me back to my race, the Portimão Global Ocean Race. The 10 sailors who put their lives on hold to show up in Portimão and race around the world are all mavericks in their own way. Over the next few months we will come to understand their motivations, their passion for life and how they view the experience. I hope that they impart just a little of their guts and determination to the rest of us.

Heady times for armchair sailors

These are heady times for armchair sailors. On October 11 the Volvo Ocean Race got underway from Alicante, Spain. A day later the inaugural Portimão Global Ocean Race set sail from Portugal and on November 9 the big one, the Vendée Globe will leave from Les Sable d’ Olonne, France. Three different around-the-world race each with their own character, their own place in the global sailing scene, all of them bound to bring drama, excitement and pure inspiration to sailors around the world.

As co-founder of the Portimão Global Ocean Race and a veteran of three Whitbread Round the World campaigns (the Whitbread now being the Volvo Ocean Race) I feel that I have some perspective. It’s only my perspective and I know there are other infinitely more qualified voices out there, but this is my blog so you get my point of view.

Things could not be better for offshore ocean racing and by extension, the broader sailing community. Eight full blown, cutting edge, VOR 70’s are hurtling around the planet dragging corporate sponsors to exotic destination with PR machines in tow. Mainstream celebrities want to be seen with the sailors and vice-versa. Offshore sailing has arrived squarely in the mainstream as a dynamic, media driven, cash guzzling public relations bonanza and it’s about time. The teams, their sponsors and the race is a phenomenon and if you have not witnessed up close the power and excitement of a Volvo 70 at full cry, I suggest you try and make one of the inshore races. 

Things are brutal on board; there is no other way to describe it. Life revolves around squeezing the most speed from the boat, 24/7. I read that on board Team Russia they carry only a single spoon per person with three spares. It’s an effort to save weight but less than two weeks into the race they have already lost four spoons. I wonder how that dynamic will play out on board. In my day we had wine with dinner, every night, and a cabin to sleep in. Granted the equipment was not up to the task and half-inch wire guys used to snap with alarming regularity, but that was all part of the adventure. Same too with the suicide of the Russian skipper in ’89. I was his Watch Captain! I took up solo sailing shortly after that. 

I have only admiration and respect for the VOR, the sailors and the corporate circus that will accompany the race over the next nine months. By contrast the Vendée Globe might as well be a different sport. France turns out in full force for these modern day argonauts. When their race starts from Les Sable d’ Olonne next month there will traffic jams 20 miles out of the city as people pour into the tiny seaside town for the start. When the first boats arrives back next February hundreds of thousands of “ordinary” men and women (and their dogs) will be there to welcome each and every sailor back home to France. For those of us who love sailing and wonder why the rest of the world does not see things our way, go to France – your heart will be warmed.

The Vendée, like the Volvo are both at the pinnacle of their success. The Vendée will have 30 boats on the start line, half of which are serious contenders for winning. The fleet includes two past winners as well as a number of other veterans who have sailed that gruelling race more than three times. Unfortunately for the Vendée this is the swan-song for many of the competitors. Add to that the campaigns are becoming prohibitively expensive and the boats too complicated to sail and you start running out of sailors to compete. You can’t have a great event without great competitors.

It’s this reality that convinced myself and my partner, Josh Hall, to step into the breech and create a new around-the-world race, one that is affordable for sailors while still meeting their aspirations and goals. The Portimão Global Ocean Race will become a serious player on the world sailing scene precisely because it fills a need that seems to be getting bigger. We are lucky to have this race sponsored in a time when the economy is in a free fall, and we are thrilled to have the Portuguese city  of Portimão as the home for the event.  Our main objective now is to get our 10 sailors back safely to Portimão next year and use their collective experience to build upon. I hope that you will bookmark our race, keep it in perspective, and join us on this global adventure.