They gave me a red shirt and I put it on to look like one of the crew, taking up my position opposite a giant from New Zealand who everyone called “Meat”.
As the ship’s “grinders”, our job was to power the winch that trims and hoists the sails. “Stand with your legs wider to get the balance right. That’s better,” said Meat, known to his nearest and dearest as Andrew Taylor. Meat and I alternated our hands on the machine’s handles, mine soft and white, his like two prime cuts of best beef.
Six of us wound at the pedestals to raise the powerful mainsail of Puma, the Open 70, that is currently in third place in the Volvo Ocean Race, the world’s most extreme team sailing race.
Today sees the beginning of the longest leg, a 12,300-mile haul from Qingdao in China across the Pacific and around Cape Horn to Rio de Janeiro. But there’s still a long way to go.
I was sailing between legs in a Singapore practice session, not that I could do much to lend a hand. This kind of racing is far removed from that of a Cowes Week regatta. One of the grinders, a tall Antiguan named Shannon Falcone, told me that during the previous leg the boat had plunged down a wave measured at 17° to the perpendicular, burying itself in the trough.
Another wave had wrenched him from the pedestal and thrown him down the deck, bowling over watch captain Chris Nicholson, who suffered an anterior cruciate knee ligament injury that could have ended his race. “I hope it will repair enough for the final legs but we need to wait and see,” he said.
When the boats are sailing at high speed, the force of water over the decks is so strong that Sidney Gavignet, the only Frenchman in the race, has taken to wearing a firefighter’s helmet for protection.
The dangers of high speed ocean racing were tragically underlined in 2006 when Hans Horrevoets, a member of the ABN Amro II crew, was washed off the back of the boat, injuring his head as he was pitched into the sea. He could not be revived when his body was recovered 40 minutes later.
It explains why Puma skipper Ken Read puts “everyone present and correct in St Petersburg” as his top priority for the finish line in June. The second point on his list he calls 2a: “That the sponsor gets more out of it than it could ever imagine.” Point 2b recognises that winning would be the best way of making 2a a reality.
Read approached Puma for sponsorship just at the right time. Jochen Zeitz, the chairman and chief executive of the sports goods manufacturer, had been thinking of launching a new range of nautical apparel. The Puma sailing team and their boat, nicknamed Il Mostro (the Monster), became the focus of the campaign.
“They didn’t compromise on anything, so we have the full kit – boots, gloves, underwear, socks, the lot, all made by Puma,” says Read.
Today’s high-powered sponsorships, professional crews and finely tuned technologies seem a world away from the first competition in 1973, then known as the Whitbread Race. Seventeen yachts of different designs, some of which were sailing with relatively inexperienced crews, set out from Portsmouth with no knowledge of what to expect. Three men lost their lives when swept overboard.
In the early Whitbread races, crew members often paid for the privilege of competing. Today the best crews can demand increasingly lucrative contracts.
“In the old days we used to turn up after a race and hit the bars. The yacht racing circuit was pretty simple then, living in trailers, chicks on the quaysides in the Caribbean, that sort of thing. It was great,” said Jerry Kirby, a former America’s Cup winner who at 52 is one of the oldest bowmen on the professional sailing circuit.
“Looking forward to the race helps me keep fit,” says Kirby, who trained with the elite US Navy Seals to get in shape for this year’s Volvo. You have to respect the foredeck crews on these yachts. Working at the weather end of the boat they occupy almost a world of their own, often out of touch with their crewmates as voices struggle to carry when there’s a gale.
Kirby’s prowess at press-ups has earned the admiration of his crewmates on Puma. “I say this with love and affection: he is a complete freak of nature,” says Read.
It was Kirby’s stories from previous Volvo races that inspired Read to put together a campaign for the 2008-2009 event. “I’d heard Jerry’s stories of past races so many times. Without those stories and his friendship I don’t know if I would have had the drive to go ahead. So I blame him for a lot of it,” he says.
After my practice stint with the Puma crew, they take part in one of the Volvo’s “in-port” races. These “round-the-can” events earn points but are something of a sideshow from the ocean legs. In Singapore, which must have one of the world’s most crowded anchorages, the port authorities simply shifted the boats away from part of the bay to allow room for racing.
Puma was leading the next leg to Qingdao when its boom broke, forcing the team to take shelter and assemble a jury rig, sailing without the boom. Read mangled his left index finger in a titanium block during heavy weather that caused problems for all the boats. Without the boom, his crew battled back to take second place in the leg.
While the crews are racing at sea, their wives, partners and families move to the venue for the next leg stopover. Volvo even provides a school for the crew’s children so that the whole event is like one big travelling show.
“It pretty well takes over our lives for the duration, although we’re rotating crew a little bit more this time and I think that has been a help,” says Read. “The physical demands are enormous, but it’s mentally tough as well,” he adds. “The key thing is to look out for ourselves and each other. The boats are vicious and we don’t want to take unnecessary risks. There is nothing macho about dying.”
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The details
To follow the crews’ progress go to www.volvooceanrace.com
