Raising the sail

The Volvo Ocean Race is the Everest of sailing. Eight boats, each with 11 crew— including skipper, navigator and cameraman—race around the world for nine months, covering 39,000 nautical miles

We do not take showers, we have only three changes of clothes and we sleep for less than four hours a night. Three times a day, we eat dried-frozen food and end up losing 5 kg during each leg of the race.” So, says Aksel Magdahl, 29, a first-time navigator on one of the boats taking part in the Volvo Ocean Race. He makes competitive sailing sound like a brutal business.

But this isn’t just any event—the Volvo Ocean Race is the Everest of sailing. Eight boats, each with 11 crew—including skipper, navigator and cameraman—race around the world for nine months, covering 39,000 nautical miles. It kicked off in October at the Spanish port of Alicante, stopping at Cape Town, South Africa, before reaching Kochi. Then it’s off to Singapore, China, around the Pacific and Atlantic Oceans, eventually ending up in Russia sometime in June.

Today, Magdahl finds himself in Kochi, in the midst of quite a hubbub. It’s the first time an Asian port has hosted a stopover for this prestigious race, and the Kochi authorities have gone to town. They built a marina for Rs 10 crore, and a 10-acre race pavilion within the port, including a wet area for hauling yachts out, servicing damaged boats and restocking. Not to mention a dry area for sponsors, “experience zones”, and team pavilions. The management of the race village claims they will draw a total of a million people over 10 days, which is certainly a record for the sport of sailing in India.

But then, sailing has always been popular in India. Cyrus Heerjee, the captain for the Royal Bombay Yacht Club, says that interest in sailing is escalating. “I have been actively engaged in three sailing clubs and there might be 2,500 members in totality. But of these, there are only 200-300 members who are active sailors,” he says, adding: “There are just over 200 yachts in Mumbai and most owners are the South Mumbai elite.”

Yacht club memberships can be bought on an annual subscription, the only prerequisite being that the subscriber should be under 35. No references are necessary and there’s no need to prove your experience as a sailor. Of the three clubs in Mumbai, memberships are open at the Bombay Sailing Association and Colaba Sailing Club that charge Rs 3 lakh and Rs 13,000, respectively—as with any club, the giant price difference has to do with the elitism of the membership. And Mumbai is not alone—there are clubs in other coastal areas like the Malabar district of Kerala and cities like Kochi, Secunderabad, Chennai, Goa and even, Chandigarh.

“For us, sailing is a leisurely activity,” says Heerjee. “But for professional sailors, it’s tough—it takes a lot of physical strength, presence of mind, and healthy reflexes to survive as a sailor,” he adds.

One of the key factors in the selection of sailors for the Ocean Race is endurance. There’s one stretch—the fifth leg, across the Pacific Ocean to Rio de Janeiro, Brazil—which has the sailors at sea for 40 days without stopping. Then there are the extreme weather conditions at sea. Thus far, they have experienced the chill of autumn in the Atlantic Ocean, and the heat and humidity of the Indian Ocean. The Brazil leg will have sailors experience the chilling Pacific-Atlantic winter.

Just fitness training isn’t enough to help sailors acclimatise to the conditions at sea, so medical help may be required at any time. With this in mind, there are two sailors on every boat, who are trained paramedics, able to stitch up cuts caused by tugging of the heavy sails, for instance. Should there be an emergency aboard, a Britain-based hospital is on hand, using video link-ups to enable onboard paramedics to perform surgery.

In one accident aboard the Ericsson 4, one of the sailors had caught an infection in his knee that made it hard for him to exercise his legs. “This happened during the first leg of the race, so there was no time to lose,” says skipper, Troben Grael. “Had we stopped until he was picked off the deck of the yacht, we’d have lost a lot of time and would have probably finished last in the leg. So, we practically dropped him in the middle of nowhere, several miles off the coast of the Capri Islands. We heard later that he was met by a speed boat an hour later and taken straight into surgery on the island.”

As you read this—during the month of March—the race will be heading through the Pacific Ocean to Brazil—the arrival is scheduled for March 20. If you want to follow the drama, go to www.volvooceanrace. org. There are blogs by sailors on their experiences and plenty of pictures and video, even, e-mails are posted.