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"  The fastest monohull sailboat in the world is a needle-nosed ocean racer called V.O.60. It was designed by Bruce Farr, and is capable of 36 knots. That&amp;#039;s 41.4 mph. This sleek machine is 64 ft. long, just over 17 ft. wide and weighs 30,000 pounds. The mast soars 85 ft. in the air. The bottom of Farr&amp;#039;s speedster has a flat after section like a powerboat--the hull lifts out of the water and planes at anything over 17 knots. To achieve this record-breaking performance, with handling to match, the weight of all equipment is concentrated in the center of the hull for a low polar moment of inertia. Both the hull and deck are as clean as possible for minimum resistance. The keel is a narrow blade sticking down into the water, with a 12,000-pound lead torpedo at the bottom that&amp;#039;s contoured to provide lift. The rudder is T-shaped, with its own lifting foil. To help trim the boat against the tilting force of the sails, 13,000 gal. of water can be pumped into three holding tanks in the hull. The hull is Kevlar cloth set in resin, and the mast, boom and spinnaker pole are carbon fiber. The sails are a woven composite, vacuum-formed under heat and pressure to hold a preset shape. Everything that&amp;#039;s not some form of composite is either aluminum or stainless steel. A Volvo Penta MD2030 Diesel generator provides power for extensive electronics, and a Volvo Penta MD22P provides auxiliary power for docking. Some 35 of these racing boats have been built, comprising an international 1-design class. The premier V.O.60 event is the around-the-world Volvo Ocean Race held every four years. The latest competition started in Southampton, England, on Sept. 23, 2001, and will end in Kiel, Germany, on Sept. 6, 2002. By that time, the crews will have raced 32,700 nautical miles, with stops in Cape Town, Sydney, Hobart, Auckland, Rio de Janeiro, Miami, Baltimore, La Rochelle and G\u00F6teborg. Expensive Racing--Is There Any Other Kind? Racing around the world is not cheap. The eight participating V.O.60s cost $3 million each and are owned by multinational companies including Australian Rupert Murdoch&amp;#039;s News Corp., Swedish lockmaker Assa Abloy and German construction company Illbruck. The companies will have spent an impressive $15 million each by the time their boat reaches the finish line. Each V.O.60 requires a crew of 12 to race it flat-out, day and night. Nearly all crew members are full-time professional sailors, who can earn up to $1500 per day. Most are in their 20s or 30s and look like bodybuilders. Only the helmsmen and tacticians, whose experience is more valuable than bulging biceps, are apt to be older than 40. Volvo has its own V.O.60, called Volvo Spirit. PR guy Dan McCue was able to secure berths in Volvo Spirit for six U.S. journalists, including me, on the 922-nautical-mile Miami-to-Baltimore leg of the Volvo Ocean Race. We&amp;#039;d be paired with six professional sailors from Sweden who were none too sure what they&amp;#039;d gotten themselves into. Before we neophyte ocean racers were allowed out, we had to go through two days of sail training with our new crew mates, plus an all-day course in safety and emergency procedures. We were restricted to one small carry-on bag and told not to expect to bathe, shave or change clothes during the trip. Above decks, Volvo Spirit looks like an oversize dinghy. There are tandem steering wheels, a dozen winches, two grinders and a convex deck fenced by lifelines. When Volvo Spirit buries her nose in a wave, there&amp;#039;s nothing to stop the water from flowing smoothly over the boat, sweeping anything not tied down--including careless sailors--over the cut-down transom. Down below, Volvo Spirit has all the cheerful ambience of a World War II U-boat. There are a half-dozen pipe berths, a token marine toilet jammed against the mast, and a cubbyhole crammed full of computers where the tactician spends his days and nights. The galley consists of a foot-square sink and a single propane-powered burner. Ocean racers live on tasteless freeze-dried food reconstituted with distilled seawater. Volvo Spirit&amp;#039;s skipper divided the 12 of us into three watches, 3 hours on and 6 hours off. We lined up next to the eight race boats and left the starting line just north of the entrance to the Port of Miami at 1 pm on Sunday, April 14. Amazingly, six of the professional skippers jumped the start and had to turn around and recross the line. We sailed behind the leaders, and ahead of the miscreants, until the group spread out over miles of ocean. The sailing was magnificent, hour after hour of running before the wind or on a broad reach, pushed along at 14 knots by 20-knot winds. We made only a handful of sail changes in four days. Twice, I was able to steer for a full 3-hour night watch without touching a line, delicately balancing the main and spinnaker, Polaris ahead and Orion behind, providing my only illumination, and 150 miles from the nearest land. It was sublime. We reached the finish line in Baltimore at 12:04 pm that Thursday, 10 hours behind the leader, News Corp. We&amp;#039;d covered 922 nautical miles in 95 hours. To our delight, the last three competitors entered the harbor while we, having shaved and showered, were eating lunch on the waterfront. The perfect ending. "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.popularmechanics.com/adventure/outdoors/a191/1277146/>