Travelling between Cape Town and the UAE became more luxurious last September when the twice-daily Emirates flight was upgraded to include more seats, flat-beds and private suites – things the Volvo Ocean Race sailors will spend the next four weeks dreaming about. They will be making the same journey, in far less comfortable circumstances, and face the quadruple threats of doldrums, cyclones, pirates and a tricky entrance into the Arabian Gulf, the port that Abu Dhabi Ocean Racing would love to reach first.
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“If you just ask which leg of the race you most want to win, it will be this one,” Ian Walker, Azzam’s skipper admitted. “I am not going to pretend it isn’t important and I’m not going to pretend I am not looking forward to getting there but we can only do our best. We’ve got six other boats in the way, who also want to get there first. It sounds very boring but like all sportsmen, we’ll concentrate on the little things.”
Andrea’s golden ticket – how a Cape Town volunteer got to meet @ADORSkipper and go sailing: http://t.co/GJM2u7nM7g pic.twitter.com/S3M8RPgHUl
— Volvo Ocean Race (@volvooceanrace) November 19, 2014
Except that on the second leg, those things will not be so little at all.
The seven-yacht fleet may find leaving South Africa more difficult than most with flat seas for a significant period before conditions change drastically. Once they’ve rounded the coast and gone past the country, they will head into tropical storm season in the southern Indian Ocean, where they will face high seas and rough winds that are likely to provide the new boats with their sternest challenge yet.
“It could be one of the worst sea states these boats have ever seen,” Charlie Enright of Team Alvimedica said. “We’ll have to keep a constant eye on everything and make sure the boats are up to being pushed as hard as we want to push them.”
None of the teams are quite sure exactly where the limits of the new, one-design boats will be reached and whether they should prioritise safety over speed or vice versa. For that reason, Team Brunel’s Bouwe Bekking expects a cagey leg with no-one willing to “take any chances at this stage.”
Risks will present themselves in other ways, like halfway up the African continent where waters are considered dangerous for other reasons. The Somalian coast is where pirates claimed a total of 181 captured cargo and fishing ships since 2005, demanding ransoms for their release. During the last race in 2011-12, possibility of the race being affected by the threat was so real that yachts were airlifted out of range from one undisclosed location to another for safety.
This time, they are not taking the same drastic precautions but there is still an exclusion zone, through which the boats may not travel. Their trackers will also be switched off while they are traveling through this region so they cannot be detected, either by the pirates or each other.
The latter is what concerns Azzam’s navigator Simon Fisher most. “Last time the risk was higher, this time the threat is very low so it’s not really a worry in terms of danger. We’ll be worrying about the other boats much more than anyone else,” he said.
By the time the teams find each other again, they will be close to entering the Arabian Gulf, where monsoon winds may blow them off course before they hit the Hormuz Straits, where the stillness will do the opposite. “The end is going to be tough,” Fisher said. “There’s a lot of terrain and not a lot of wind and coming past Oman and the top of the Hormuz Straits, which can be very difficult. Potentially we could race for 20 to 25 days and find ourselves all restarting there. You’ve got to prepare yourself mentally for that.”
To Azzam’s advantage, they have physical preparation as well. “We sailed in and out of the straits and we did six months of training in Abu Dhabi before the last race,” Walker said. “We are familiar with the waters up past Ras al-Khaimar and down the Oman coast but I have not raced round there. Normally you have to race somewhere to see what’s good or bad. But first we have to get there. When we do there will be an incredible welcome in store.” Especially if they get there first.
