Fisher's View- Close finishes predicted from one design fleet in Volvo
by Bob Fisher on 10 Oct 2014
Abu Dhabi Ocean Racing and Team Alvimedica during the In-Port Race in Alicante. Ainhoa Sanchez/Volvo Ocean Race
The world's leading sailing journalist, Bob Fisher, is in Alicante for the start of the Volvo Ocean Race. Here's the first of a three-part series covering the build up to the start of the event in 48hours time.
Alicante, Friday – The pace is hotting up with increasing rapidity. There are less than 48 hours to the start of this edition of the Volvo Ocean Race - the twelfth since the event began (as the Whitbread Round the World Race in 1973). This, however, is the first in one-design boats and has nine stopovers during its 38,739-mile course that finishes in Gothenburg on June 27th next year.
The seven competing yachts – 65 footers with canting-keels and water-ballast are proving almost as quick as the 70 footers from the last race; possibly faster downwind and fractionally slower upwind in heavy airs; and promise to finish more closely than ever before.
The yachts are lined up stern-to at the dock in the marina inside the race village. The organisers are happy that in the first nine days the village had already attracted in excess of 200,000 visitors and with a three-day holiday before that start expect that figure to reach another 100,000. It’s a measure of what the other stopover ports can expect.
The 65-footers each have eight crew members plus a non-contributory media representative on board. The only exception is SCA, the all-girl crew, which is allowed three more crew to attempt to level the strength supplied by the men. Even then the women will find it tough going as the men have admitted that it is tough even for them.
It will not be tough at the start – only four to five knots of breeze are expected on a sunny Saturday and Simon Fisher, the navigator of the Abu Dhabi entry Azzam, has predicted that it will take two days at least to reach Gibraltar, 300 miles away. He says that there is no sign of the Atlantic Trades to take them across the Ocean on the accepted route to Cape Town.
For one crew, that of the young men on the Turkish/American boat Alvimedica, there is some foreboding as they believe that they will learn more on the long first leg than they have done in all their previous training. They have shown already that they have speed, by winning the in-port race last Saturday and skipper Charlie Enright says: 'Our goal is to be one of the fastest improving teams – we’ll see if we can make good on that.'
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