Show Boats

By Eve Zibart
Friday, April 21, 2006

Imagine an eight-month-long Formula One race in cars without windshields, roofs or seat belts. Imagine that the unmarked track is not 500 miles but 36,000 miles long, crisscrossed with speed bumps and pitted with bone-wrenching potholes. Imagine the pit crew sleeping -- when they can -- in four-hour shifts, worried not about changing a simple flat tire in a stationary pull-off but lunging at and hauling in sheared-off and whipping rubber in a sudden squall while the vehicle bucks and shudders.

Imagine the drivers fending off sunburn and praying for wind one week and ducking torrential rain and winds of up to 80 mph the next, and dodging hail and icebergs after that. Add in that the crew of 10 or 11 has to share a camper-size kitchen and only one toilet -- a severe lack of head room, so to speak -- and may have only a single change of clothing in their bags.

And finally consider that these boats -- for so these "race cars" are -- are built for sailing in deep water but must also negotiate regions as notorious as the doldrums, the Bermuda Triangle, Cape Horn and the Chesapeake Bay, which the official race Web site describes as "120 miles of flat, tidal water, ring-fenced with muddy shoals, peppered with crab pot markers and bedeviled by light and fluky winds," not to mention shallows and the occasional gale, and you have a sense of what crewing in a round-the-world sailing race is like.

The 2005-06 Volvo Ocean Race (known until 2001 as the Whitbread), which, like the Olympics and World Cup soccer, is staged only every four years, pits a half-dozen light, ultra-swift and daringly exposed 70-foot-long boats against the Earth's restless waters and uncertain weather, competing technology and mechanics, and each human other.

For the next two weeks, these high-strung, high-performance vessels, which took off on the first leg of the contest Nov. 12, are on display, at rest and in action, at festivals in Baltimore and Annapolis. On May 4, the whole panoply of sail will be on view as the fleet parades from the Inner Harbor to Annapolis for that city's Maritime Heritage Festival. Area enthusiasts will have an even more exciting vantage point if they participate in the Chesapeake Bay Bridge run or walk May 7, when the fleet leaves Annapolis headed to a point at the mouth of the Severn River about a half-mile above Thomas Point Light and heads back to the Bay Bridge before turning south to the Atlantic for the race into New York Harbor.

The six still-viable entries are the American Pirates of the Caribbean, named for the Disney mega-hit film and part of a publicity campaign for the sequel, which opens at the same time as the race ends (it flies a skull and crossbones flag); the Swedish entry Ericsson; the Brazilian Brasil 1; the Spanish movistar; and the Dutch double entry, ABN Amro One and Two. A seventh boat, the Australian Brunel, withdrew after the second leg with cash and mechanical troubles but is being taken by freighter to Baltimore to make the last four legs.

Obviously, this is no race for amateurs. Ericsson skipper John Kostecki, who won the last Volvo, took his first world championship at age 18. His team collectively has 25 Whitbread/Volvo races and 33 round-the-globe races to their credit, which is not even the most among the teams. ABN Amro One skipper Mike Sanderson won the 1993-94 race and is generally considered to have put his boat pretty safely in the lead.

Pirates of the Caribbean may be part of one of the most expensive public relations campaigns in history -- it's estimated that purchasing and crewing a Volvo 70 costs as much as $25 million, not to mention the Pirate crew's designer duds by Z Zegna -- but Disney isn't playing this just for show: Skipper Paul Cayard won the 1997-98 Volvo and has placed in seven world championships, two Olympics and five America's Cup contests. The 11 crew members, from seven countries, count five Volvo wins among them. (Plans originally called for the stars of the movie "Pirates," Johnny Depp, Orlando Bloom and Keira Knightley, to take turns aboard ship; although that hasn't panned out, there are persistent hints of possible star sightings in Baltimore.)

Even so, crew members are learning on the job. The Volvo Open 70 Offshore Sailboats, to give them their full name, are 10 feet longer than their predecessors and 25 percent more powerful and are capable of making perhaps 40 knots, about 46 mph. As Britt Ward of Farr Yacht Design, the Annapolis firm that designed four of the entries, put it, "These boats are so much more powerful, and they're just that much more dangerous." Designed using computer technology and virtual imaging that even the Disney sponsors must have admired, the 70s are on the cutting edge of shipbuilding technology.

They are also on the cutting edge of communications technology, which has increased both safety and public access. Each boat is fitted with a Global Positioning System device and extensive Internet connections as well as virtual links to a medical staff the likes of which many injured and infected sailors could never have conceived.

The communications links also benefit crews in mechanical fashion. When the Pirates crew reported water seeping in around the keel, skipper Cayard was able to photograph and transmit images of the area to the Annapolis offices of Farr Yacht Design and hold two days of video conferences with staff that confirmed the hull was structurally sound. On a personal level, too, GPS has remade the seagoing life: One crew member has shared in the birth of a child, and another is expecting a similar celebration before race's end.

For the benefit of sailing fans, crew members and skippers are able to post online reports and photos of the daily action; supply voice data interviews for the BBC and Voice of America, among other networks; and even respond (occasionally) to e-mail.

The various race Web sites keep continuous track of positions and maneuvers, updated automatically every 15 minutes. Each boat is fitted with seven fixed cameras, a head-cam (that's cranial-mounted, not toilet-invading) and five microphones recording every detail for an online network, a sort of virtual black box; at least nine documentaries of the race are planned.

Welcome to the 21st-century version of the 19th century's final frontier.

Safety is no lightweight topic here. Throughout the history of competitive long-distance sailing, boats have competed at great peril.

One of the most famous long-distance sailing races is the Fastnet Challenge, which runs about 600 miles from the Isle of Wight around Fastnet Rock in Ireland and back to Plymouth, England. Seven boats entered the first Fastnet Challenge in 1926, and only four finished. In 1957, only 12 of 42 entries completed the course. Most deadly was the 1979 Fastnet, during which 303 sailboats were caught in a hurricane-level storm in the Irish Sea. Nineteen lives were lost, and 160 sailors required rescue, 25 yachts were abandoned and five went down in the 70-mph gale. (American sailing legend Gary Jobson, master of ceremonies for the Annapolis festival, served as watch captain on the winning yacht, Ted Turner's Tenacious.) And in 1985, the maxi-yacht Drum, co-owned by Duran Duran member Simon Le Bon, had its keel sheared off and overturned; Le Bon and five other crew were trapped beneath the hull for 20 minutes.

The first Golden Globe, a nonstop solo race around the world, was held in 1968-69; after 10 months, only one of the nine starters, Robin Knox-Johnston, finished the race. The first Whitbread (now the Volvo), which covered more 27,000 nautical miles -- about 31,000 land miles -- took off on Sept. 8, 1973, with 17 entries; 14 crossed the finish line nine months later, with three fatalities. Even this year, although there have been no severe accidents, there have been minor injuries, numerous breakdowns and some very close calls. (One of the reasons Brunel had to withdraw was its battered condition.)

In the first leg, both Ericsson and Pirates had to turn back to Spain for major repairs; movistar very nearly sank off Cape Horn, and it and Pirates had to return to Cape Town, South Africa. In fact, Pirates fans were beginning to mutter about "The Curse of the Black Pearl" coming true after the third time the boat had to pull up, interrupting a run that would have set a world 24-hour distance record. (It went instead to movistar.) ABN Amro Two proclaimed itself happy to make it into Baltimore after nearly watching its rigging dragged overboard. Ericsson cracked its hull, and all have had to deal with broken masts, torn sails and the like. And although it was not a hazard, leader ABN Amro One, which had a substantial lead coming in to Baltimore, was suddenly and excruciatingly becalmed, while behind it, Ericsson was nearly halted by a squall.

Although much of the course changes each time, this marks the third consecutive stopover in the Baltimore-Annapolis region, reflecting the area's huge yachting and marine audience. The last time the race came through the area, as many as 300,000 spectators visited the Inner Harbor in a single day, more than a half-million altogether.

Each of the stopover ports has prepared similar festivals, each playing up the local culture. The Baltimore Waterfront Festival, which runs through May 4 all along the Inner Harbor promenade -- rain or shine -- offers a huge array of family activities, street theater and music, maritime displays, food concessions and demonstrations, plus tours of the racing boats and visiting tall ships, all free and all fully accessible.

The Bay Cabaret/Main Stage hosts music from noon to 9 daily by local pop, reggae, jazz, ska, indie-rock, blues, zydeco, funk, soul and blues performers, surrounded by food and limited alcohol vendors. (Phillips, Baltimore's first name in seafood, gets in on the all-you-can-eat-for-cash trend with a crab cake eating contest, sanctioned by the International Federation of Competitive Eating, on April 29.)

Baltimore chefs will demonstrate recipes at the Chesapeake Kitchen area, which is also where the oyster shuck off, celebrity crab-picking contests and other food-related events will take place.

For the first time in race history, the fleet will sail out into the bay for an official race, west of the Chester River, and then return for the prize ceremony at the Main Stage. And for those who like even more hand-to-hand combat, the new class of four-handed catamarans, the Extreme Volvo 40s, will race five times inside the harbor. For younger and intermediate sailing enthusiasts, there's the Rotary Club Regatta (J/22 and Sonar classes) out of Port Covington April 30.

Baltimore's festival also offers several ways to participate, at least vicariously, in the Volvo Ocean Race. The Downtown Sailing Center will offer free sailing lessons April 29 from noon to 5, first signed up, first sailed. (See the center's booth at the waterside steps of the Maryland Science Center.) In addition, the center will offer free sailboat rides throughout the festival.

For those who prefer to stick to land, the two-story Ericsson Pavilion, which looks a lot like a yacht and is actually a bit larger than its seagoing sibling, will be open to the public Thursday through April 30. The 11-section "experience center" has up-to-the-minute information on the progress of the fleet, theatrical simulations of life aboard ship and even the risk of a bout of seasickness in the wave tunnel, with its 33-foot video wall of ocean water and wind. (Like an Epcot pavilion, it combines the fun with more than 50 promotional displays and demos of cutting-edge Sony and Ericsson technologies.)

Each team has an official tent set up on Rash Field. ABN Amro has a sailing simulator that re-creates 10 minutes on the open seas. And the most cautious landlubbers can stroll to Harbor Point at Thames and Block streets to try out blo-karts -- sail-driving go-karts, in effect -- for a taste of the wind-blown life.

During the Annapolis festival May 4-7 there will be no in-port races, but there is an Optimist Class regatta May 5 sponsored by the Annapolis Yacht Club; a regatta named in Gary Jobson's honor May 6 at City Dock; and several chances to meet the crews, including the Annapolis Salutes the Volvo Ocean Race blowout May 5. The crew party for the 1997- 98 race was dubbed by Sailing magazine the "best sailors party in history," and this year's festivities, headlined by country blues singer Joanna Cotten and featuring a half-dozen other acts, sprawls across the joint properties of the Eastport Yacht Club and the Severn Sailing School ($25 advance, $35 at the door; 410-263-0415).

Tactics and logistics are the subject of a "Meet the Skippers" public forum May 6, moderated by Jobson and featuring the crew chiefs of the 70s.

City Dock festivities will include daily concerts by local entertainers and the Naval Academy Band. The exhibits of the new National Sailing Hall of Fame and Museum, housed in a semi-permanent tent on the waterfront while permanent housing is constructed, honors those who have made outstanding contributions to the sport.

More lighthearted events include a BYOB event -- build your own boat -- May 6, in which teams of two are challenged to build a water-worthy plywood vessel (some materials but no tools supplied; call 410-268-2114 for information); the first Black Pearl Treasure Hunt with first prize of a three-night adventure cruise aboard a luxury catamaran (410-280-1821); and dress-up contests for both human and canine pirates-in-waiting May 6 and 7, respectively.

The Governor's Bay Bridge 10K run May 7 begins at 8, but contestants must be at Sandy Point State Park at 7 to take shuttle buses to the starting line on Kent Island (registration closed). The Chesapeake Bay Bridge walk kicks off at 9; shuttles for that event leave beginning at 8:30 from Anne Arundel Community College, Navy Marine Corps Memorial Stadium and Chesapeake Business Park in Stevensville (877-229-7726).

Meanwhile, the last formal event, the blessing of the fleet, is at 10 that day at City Dock, after which the Volvo 70s proceed to the race restart at the mouth of the Severn.

Eve Zibart's mother once boomed her father off a sailboat into Long Island Sound in his three-piece white linen Sunday suit.