A Chance to Go Round the World, and Perhaps Round the Bend

BRISTOL, R.I.

With all the dreary news in international sailing these days -- the interminable America's Cup onshore wrangling and the usual pre-Olympic legal intrigues -- there's an upbeat development, as well. The Volvo Ocean Race is back, replete with peril and derring-do plus a competitive new U.S. entry.

Sometime this month, Rhode Island skipper Ken Read will splash his rakishly fast new 70-footer in Boston Harbor and begin training a team of 10 in Newport, R.I., for the start of the world's most challenging round-the-world race this fall. The boat is called Puma, after the athletic gear manufacturer sponsoring it.

Seven Volvo 70s leave Alicante, Spain, on Oct. 8, bound for South Africa, India, Singapore, China, Brazil, Boston, Ireland, Sweden and Russia. The fifth leg, from Qingdao, China, to Rio de Janeiro, will test offshore racers as they rarely are tested. It's 12,300 nautical miles, up to 40 days at sea, deep into the frigid Southern Ocean to round the world's scariest headland, Cape Horn, as fast as humanly possible.

Why would anyone embrace such danger and discomfort? "In a lifetime," says Read, 46, a veteran helmsman with three America's Cups and countless inshore regattas on his résumé, "there's just so many 'round-the-buoys races you can do before you go insane. Then, all of a sudden you're racing around the world in a boat that can do the speed of a car without even trying.

"The boats are magical," said Read, who got his introduction by signing onto the Swedish entry Ericsson for the last legs of the 2005-06 Volvo, starting in Baltimore. "Sometimes a design trips over a combination of displacement, length and sail area that's magic. These boats are on plane all the time. They just go."

He likes the people, too. "The mentality is different. You're sailing short-handed, four or five people on deck on a big, powerful boat going 25 knots at night. These are tough, hard guys.

"I tell you," Read sad, "I've revamped my career. I never was on a boat where I drove less. The skipper mostly works down below with the navigator, strategizing. Everything has to be thought through. Everything has to be done slower, the mechanics and physics are different. You're doing the same things with less people on a Formula One racer at full speed."

It's not as if Read hasn't seen the game at its harshest. Ericsson was hit with 40-knot headwinds when it reached the ocean after leaving Baltimore last time. Then a crewman was lost off rival ABN-Amro II on the transatlantic passage, the first fatality since 1989 in the round-the-world race. Then Spanish entry Movistar broke down and sank in mid-Atlantic, with all hands rescued.

"While those terrible things were happening, we were sailing Ericsson's best leg of the race, a second-place finish. But you can't celebrate surrounded by tragedy. You're just trying to pick yourself up off the mat."

Read spoke last week amid the hubbub of a big boat in the rushed last stages of construction. Carbon-fiber dust flew and sanders shrieked in a cordoned-off section of the Goetz boatbuilding sheds here. Up until now, Puma's design and construction features have been tightly guarded secrets, but with launch just days away, Read agreed to host a tour. "You're the first," he said.

Even to the unpracticed eye, Puma looks fast -- sharp at the bow and broad at the stern, a stiff, 70-foot-long dart made of featherlight carbon fiber. Every ounce of weight saved from the hull and rigging is a competitive advantage, Read said, "so there isn't a milligram or millimeter that hasn't been thought out for strength and durability."