<http://schema.org/articleBody>
" With just a few months to get ready for the November 5 start of the Volvo Ocean Race (VOR), teams are preparing their boats, sails, equipment and themselves for the eight-month odyssey around the globe. The VOR will take seven competing boats 31,000 miles, stopping in nine ports along the way. The race&amp;#039;s biggest drama unfolds in the two long Southern Ocean legs, one from Cape Town, South Africa, to Melbourne, Australia, and a second from Wellington, New Zealand, around Cape Horn to Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. The legs cover 10,000 miles of 40-knots-plus winds, 30-ft. waves and temperatures that rarely venture above 40\u00B0 -- enough to earn the Volvo Ocean Race the nickname &amp;quot;the Mount Everest of Sailing.&amp;quot; To get around the world alive--let alone in first place -- the teams will race the fastest open-ocean single-hull class of sailboats ever built: the brand-new Volvo Open 70 (VO70). POPULAR MECHANICS spoke with two veterans of the last edition of the VOR (2001-2002) about life on the edge of the Earth. Australian Peter Merrington was a watch captain on Djuice Dragons, and American Katie Pettibone was a watch captain and trimmer on the all-female Amer Sports Too. They sailed Volvo Open 60s (VO60), a slightly smaller (by 10 ft. in length) yet heavier predecessor to the VO70. Click here for &amp;quot;How It Works: Volvo Open 70 Offshore Racer.&amp;quot; Popular Mechanics: These boats can break 30 knots in the right conditions. What&amp;#039;s it like on board when you&amp;#039;re traveling at such a high speed in the Southern Ocean? Peter Merrington: The sensation of speed is tremendous; it&amp;#039;s like being on a runaway train but not knowing what&amp;#039;s on the tracks in front of you. On deck the water comes at you like a fire hose when the boat plunges into the back of a wave, and when it&amp;#039;s not solid water it just sprays everywhere. On watch you&amp;#039;re usually working too hard to worry about the cold, but it can get really cold if you get too far south. Katie Pettibone: It&amp;#039;s like living and sleeping inside a roller coaster, with the constant motion of the boat. This is especially so at night when it&amp;#039;s dark, when it&amp;#039;s more like being in Disney&amp;#039;s Space Mountain. But the adrenaline rush makes it exhilarating. Pop Mech: Eventually, you get some time to go below and sleep. What&amp;#039;s it like below-decks during your off-watch? PM: Down below the roar of the water [rushing past the hull] is like being inside a full-size waterfall. And all the while you&amp;#039;re aware that your life is in the hands of the boys on deck. But you do get sleep, just because you&amp;#039;re so thoroughly exhausted and it&amp;#039;s a relief to get the break. You just hope it isn&amp;#039;t any wetter down below [from wet sails, open hatches and the occasional leak] than it is on deck! KP:You don&amp;#039;t get much time off in conditions like this: it takes 45 minutes to get in and out of your gear and take care of duties down below while the boat is really rocking around. That leaves only 1 to 2 hours of sleep [in a 4-hour watch]. I find that I&amp;#039;m always on edge, listening for any changes or noises that are different and might alert you to something happening on deck. You always keep an ear out for an unusual sound, or motion, or shouts -- any kind of change will bring you awake. Pop Mech: There are thousands of shipping containers drifting out in the open oceans, not to mention icebergs and the occasional whale. Were you afraid of collisions in these conditions? PM: Hitting things at speed would have been disastrous, but we never really worried about it too much because we often couldn&amp;#039;t see anything to hit anyway. The Volvo Open 60s were built of Kevlar, so in a way we felt we were protected, like wearing a bulletproof vest. KP: Yeah, you worry, but except for the really big icebergs you wouldn&amp;#039;t likely see anything anyway, so why worry, right? No, we kept an eye out all the time and sometimes the radar was good for seeing anything big, but it still wasn&amp;#039;t too much of an issue. You worry more about keeping the boat upright and not breaking anything or hurting anyone, because help is a long, long way away. My biggest fear was losing someone over the side. In that cold water, a man overboard would last only 9 minutes. Surfing along at 20 knots, you&amp;#039;d be leaving that person at the rate of 30 feet per second, and it would be a real feat to get the sails down and the boat turned around in that time -- if you could still see him! PM: It was a common expression [among crew in the race] to say if you chose not to clip in [put on your life harness], you should tell us who gets your rations, because if you went over it was likely you wouldn&amp;#039;t make it back on board. Pop Mech: Do search and rescue devices such as EPIRBS, satellite communications, strobes and survival suits make it safer in the event of a crewman overboard? KP: Well, everyone should be aware of what&amp;#039;s available and how to use it, but the bottom line is that whistles, strobe lights and flotation devices only increase your chances, but are no guarantees. Pop Mech: The new VO70s have sophisticated technologies such as canting keels, trim ballast tanks and greatly reduced weight. What features will make the new boats better or easier to sail than older ocean-racing designs? PM: The trim ballast tanks aft should help keep the stern down and bow up, so it might not nose-dive into the waves as much, which means you can push the boat harder without worrying about crashing [broaching]. This gives you more confidence on the helm and you don&amp;#039;t have to be so cautious. KP: The canting keel and forward daggerboards should make the boats easier to drive, especially in reaching conditions because the boards should make the boat better balanced and easier to track. On the VO60s in these conditions, we&amp;#039;d have the water tanks full, so that ton of extra weight made the boat handle like a truck, really heavy on the helm; the new boats should feel more like a Porsche. PM: The new boats are all-carbon now, so they should be just that much lighter and stiffer and better performing. Also, the non-metal rigging is the way of the future, making the boats stiffer in all conditions. KP: The trim ballast tanks will be good, so maybe they won&amp;#039;t have to move all the weight [of the sails and gear] aft in the boat when going downwind to bring the bow up. The PBO rigging is really light, but I think of it like kryptonite, because any little exposure to the sun [from abrasion of the coating material] and it loses strength right away. Pop Mech: Peter, you&amp;#039;ve had some scary firsthand experience with canting keels. Tell us about what happened to you on the 74-ft. maxi yacht Skandia in the last Sydney-Hobart Race. PM: Yeah, well, we had some bad weather in the Bass Strait where the wind got up to nearly 40 knots and the waves were a really lumpy mess, so the boat was launching and crashing off the waves. The hydraulic rams controlling the keel angle failed, and we were not able to keep it from swinging around in the boat. The rams finally broke. So, we took the sails down and tried to stabilize the keel, but it was still swinging around in those seas so violently that it started to break the boat. We thought at any minute the whole lot would break off and with those big seas we&amp;#039;d capsize. So, we got on the radio with the mayday calls and inflated the life rafts. Just when we got everyone into the lifeboats the keel finally broke off and the boat capsized. Pop Mech: The Sydney-Hobart Race is relatively close to shore, and the crew was rescued. The Volvo Ocean Race takes you well outside of helicopter range. Are you worried about using canting keels on the VO70s? PM: Well, yeah, you&amp;#039;d want to make sure the whole system was well thought out and built properly. In the Southern Ocean to have one of these things fail would be really scary; it&amp;#039;s a long way from anywhere. But this is considered the ultimate race using the ultimate offshore machines, so it&amp;#039;s worth the risk ... just hope nothing breaks. Pop Mech: Any predictions on who will win? PM: The guys who have the most time in their boat before the start will be hard to beat. KP: Yeah, it will be like last time. Time in the boats is really important, especially now with the canting keels, to know when they work and when they don&amp;#039;t. Check back in mid-August for a more detailed POPULAR MECHANICS explanation of how the Volvo Open 70 Offshore Racer works. "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.popularmechanics.com/adventure/outdoors/a272/1638687/>