VOLVO RACE-THE ULTIMATE ADVENTURE IN OCEAN SPORTS
The Volvo Ocean Race is an exceptional test of sailing prowess and human endeavour which has been built on the spirit of great seafarers - fearless men who sailed the world’s oceans aboard square rigged clipper ships more than a century ago.
Their challenge back then was not a race as such, but recording the fastest time between ports. This meant new levels of pride for themselves and great recognition for their vessel.
The spirit that drove those commercial sailors along the web of trade routes, deep into the bleak latitudes of the Southern Ocean and around the world’s most dangerous capes, emerges today in the form of the Volvo Ocean Race, a contest now seen as the pinnacle of achievement in the sport.
The first edition of this sporting adventure came in the wake of two remarkable sailors of the last century, Sir Francis Chichester and Sir Robin Knox-Johnston, men who drew worldwide acclaim for amazing solo voyages around the planet. Inevitably their success led to talk in international sailing circles of a race around the world for fully crewed yachts. It became a reality in 1973 with The Whitbread round the World Race, the longest, most demanding and perilous sporting contest the world had known.
Dangerous it was. In that very first race three competing sailors were lost after being washed overboard during storms. This led to the inevitable call for that inaugural contest to be the last, but the desire for unbridled adventure and great competition led to the race being staged every four years.
The re-badged Volvo Ocean Race was run for the first time in 2001-02. Today it is, quite simply, the ‘Everest of Sailing’.
During the nine months of the 2008-09 Volvo, which starts in Alicante, Spain in October 2008 and concludes in St Petersburg, Russia, during late June 2009, the teams will sail over 37,000 nautical miles of the world’s most treacherous seas via Cape Town, Kochi, Singapore, Qingdao, around Cape Horn to Rio de Janeiro, Boston, Galway, Goteborg and Stockholm.
Each of the seven entries has a sailing team of 11 professional crew, and the race requires their utmost skills, physical endurance and competitive spirit as they race day and night for more than 30 days at a time on some of the legs. They will each take on different jobs onboard the boat and on top of these sailing roles, there will be two sailors that have had medical training, as well as a sailmaker, an engineer and a media specialist.
During the race the crews will experience life at the extreme: no fresh food is taken onboard so they live off freeze dried fare, they will experience temperature variations from -5 to +40 degrees Celsius and will only take one change of clothes. They will trust their lives to the boat and the skipper and experience hunger and sleep deprivation.
The race is the ultimate mix of world class sporting competition and on the edge adventure, a unique blend of onshore glamour with offshore drama and endurance.
It is undeniably the world’s premier global race and one of the most demanding team sporting events in the world.
For the first time in the event’s history, the Volvo Ocean Race introduces significant changes to the race format, and will visit new ports along a new route that includes stopovers in the middle-east, India and Asia.The Volvo Ocean Race is taking part in a pioneering project aimed at finding out how the oceans have been affected by ships’ exchanging of billions of tonnes of ballast water. Each boat in the race will be involved in the programme which was initiated by the Official Logistics Partner, Wallenius Wilhelmsen Logistics (WWL).
The dedicated media crew member on board each racing yacht will be responsible for taking regular water samples using a sophisticated testing process based on bioluminescence using a measuring instrument called a luminometer.The research at sea involves recording the mass of species in the sample and reporting the results. A scientific report of the findings will be published post-race.The race route provides scientists with a rare opportunity to analyse the biomass of the water in deep seas not on the regular shipping routes.
WWL, an environmental leader in logistics and ocean transportation, is very enthusiastic about the project. It provides an opportunity to advance scientific research as to how foreign invaders found in ballast water are upsetting the eco-systems in the world’s great oceans.“Invasive species are one of the four major threats to the world’s oceans, the other three being global climate change, marine pollution and over fishing. It’s about conducting research that will go towards creating some better ballast water treatment systems for the future.
The United Nations marine body, the International Maritime Organisation (IMO), is in the process of getting member nations to ratify a convention which would force countries to ensure that their ships treat their ballast water so that it doesn’t carry invasive species to other oceans. Every country on the 2008-09 race route is under threat from invasive marine species, from the Ostrea gigas (oyster) in South Africa, which has destroyed habits and caused eutrophication, to the Gymondinium catenatum in China, an algae which has caused shellfish poisoning.
To put this research in perspective, the IMO has issued a dire warning about the threat of invasive marine species carried across the world in ballast water.Unlike other marine pollution, from which the environment will eventually recover, the impacts of invasive marine species are most often irreversible.
The Volvo Ocean Race 2008-09 will be the 10th running of this ocean marathon. Starting from Alicante in Spain, on 4 October 2008, it will, for the first time, take in Cochin, Singapore and Qingdao before finishing in St Petersburg, Russia for the first time in the history of the race. Spanning some 37,000 nautical miles, stopping at around 11 ports and taking nine months to complete, the Volvo Ocean Race is the world’s premier yacht race for professional racing crews.
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