Volvo Ocean Race Fleet Ready to Compete; Two U.S. Skippers Join International Roster of Sailing's Best Racers as Round-the-World Classic Nears Start Gun

    IRVINE, Calif.--(BW SportsWire)--Aug. 23, 2001--The Volvo Ocean Race (www.VolvoOceanRace.org) is recognized as the pre-eminent test of long-distance ocean yacht racing -- with top level sailors challenging the world's toughest seas and sailing conditions in a nine-month point-to-point battle that begins September 23 in Southampton, England and ends next summer in Kiel, Germany.
    American skippers Lisa Charles McDonald and John Kostecki are among those vying for top honors. They are part of an American contingent spread among the Volvo Ocean Race's international syndicate entries -- each boasting the latest in modern sailing technology and crewed by only the best and most courageous ocean racers.

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    Top Professionals Toe-to-Toe for Nine Grueling Rounds

    The Volvo Ocean Race is one of the last grand prix sport events with a highly adventurous background. Professional top athletes live for nine months in extremely confined and uncomfortable conditions while pushing sailing to new limits. But the sailing is just the tip of an iceberg behind, consisting of a lot of project management, technology, leadership, organization and logistics to name a few.
    The Volvo Ocean Race enjoys a heritage going back nearly 30 years of attracting the world's best in ocean racing. At the beginning there was a large element of adventure and that aspect will never go away. But over the years, as has happened at the top level of all major sports, it has become more and more professional. The best designers and builders now combine with the most skillful sailors to provide a spectacle unparalleled in the sport.
    It is a marathon, it is a sprint, it is a test of endurance and a test of quick-wittedness, it pushes both people and equipment to the limit and it takes nearly nine months to complete. It is the pinnacle of professional offshore sailing. It is the Volvo Ocean Race.
    The first leg alone, from Southampton to Cape Town, can offer the whole gamut of challenges from Bay of Biscay storms to that mid-Atlantic desert called the Doldrums. The run down the coast of South America calls for nerve and verve and the approach to the Cape of Good Hope, where the cold Atlantic meets the warm Indian Ocean is the time for all-out effort and concentration at the end of what is the longest of the nine legs which add up to 32,700 miles.
    The Southern Ocean is still the most feared and desolate area of the planet. Little commercial shipping uses it, the fishing fleets largely avoid it, there are just a few isolated communities, usually of scientific researchers, clinging to rocky outcrops like the Kerguelen Islands. Both the second leg, from Cape Town to Sydney and the fourth, from Auckland to Rio de Janeiro, are dominated by the time in the deep south, skirting Antarctica, where both the brain and the body are numbed by the cold.
    But the boats themselves remain the same powerful racing machines that are so exhilarating when the conditions are favorable. Although called V.O.60s, they are 60 feet long on the water line but, with overhangs at both the bow and stern, are usually about 64 feet long. They are built from the same Kevlar fibre that is used for bullet- proof vests and their carbon fibre masts tower 90 feet above the deck, supporting huge sails which develop phenomenal horsepower. Like Formula 1 race cars, they are all built to rules which control the dimensions, but allow differences for designers to exploit.
    They are not always a comfortable ride. In big rolling seas or the chop of inshore waters they can produce an irregular bouncy motion that can make it difficult even to stand up and walk along the deck. Below it can be either cold, dark and damp, or hot, dark and damp, and it is always cramped.
    The crews work the boats round the clock, usually four hours on and four hours off, for not just days but weeks, the food is reconstituted from freeze dried and sleep is a trial in itself. The navigator is entombed in a box barely bigger than himself, surrounded by computers and satellite communication systems. No wonder their life at sea makes them look so pale. And every six hours a message comes through from race headquarters to tell them not only how they have done but how all their rivals have fared as well. It has been described as just one long series of six hour races, always looking for the slightest advantage.
    That advantage can be achieved by reading the weather patterns cleverly and putting the yacht in the right wind system and it can be achieved by the superior skill of the crew. Apart from the navigator, they all have to turn their hands to a variety of jobs and such can be the physical demands of driving one of these boats downwind under spinnaker in heavy seas that the helmsmen may be handing over after as little as 30 minutes. That means there is a need for perhaps six expert helmsmen among the 12 crew; as soon as one performance falls off even slightly it will show up on the computer.
    While there are a maximum of 12 crew at any one time, there can be a squad of much more, to include specialists for some of the legs. Even that does not always work; Dennis Conner, in the last race, brought in a Chesapeake Bay pilot to help navigate the shallows up to the finish in Baltimore. They ran aground. Just a small error can lose places and each leg scores equal points. One point for the winner, eight for the last and the yacht with the least points at the end wins the specially commissioned trophy, Fighting Finish, by Waterford Crystal.
    The race takes the fleet on from Cape Town to Sydney. On Boxing Day they set off on the classic Sydney to Hobart Race as part of the third leg to Auckland. Each must make a minimum pit stop in Hobart, Tasmania, of three hours. The rest of the competitors can take a day or two to recover.
    From Auckland they exit the Southern Ocean when they round Cape Horn and finish the fourth leg in Rio de Janeiro. Legs five and six take them to Miami then Baltimore and the leg seven sees them re-cross the Atlantic to La Rochelle. The final two legs are almost sprints, taking them first from the Bay of Biscay to Gothenburg and then on to the finale in Kiel. It could go down to the wire.

Start date           September 23, 2001
Location             Southampton, UK

LEG ONE              Southampton - Cape Town, South Africa - 
                     7,350 nautical miles
Depart Southampton:  September 23, 2001
ETA Sydney:          October 23, 2001

LEG TWO              Cape Town to Sydney, Australia - 6,550 nautical 
                     miles
Depart Cape Town:    November 11, 2001
ETA Sydney:          December 4, 2001

LEG THREE            Sydney (via Hobart) to Auckland, New Zealand - 
                     2,050 nm
Depart Sydney:       December 26, 2001
ETA Auckland:        January 3, 2002

LEG FOUR             Auckland to Rio de Janeiro, Brazil - 6,700 nm
Depart Auckland:     January 27, 2002
ETA Rio de Janeiro:  February 19, 2002

LEG FIVE             Rio de Janeiro to Miami, USA - 4,450 nm
Depart Rio de 
 Janeiro:            March 9, 2002
ETA Miami:           March 27, 2002

LEG SIX              Miami to Baltimore/Annapolis, USA - 875 nm
Depart Miami:        April 14, 2002
ETA Baltimore:       April 17, 2002

LEG SEVEN            Baltimore/Annapolis to La Rochelle, France - 
                     3,400 nm
Depart Annapolis:    April 28, 2002
ETA La Rochelle:     May 11, 2002

LEG EIGHT            La Rochelle to Gothenburg, Sweden - 1,075 nm
Depart La Rochelle:  May 25, 2002
ETA Gothenburg:      May 31, 2002

LEG NINE             Gothenburg to Kiel, Germany FINISH - 250 nm
Depart Gothenburg:   June 8, 2002
ETA Kiel:            June 9, 2002