Under starter's orders

Ed Gorman surveys The Race fleet assembled in Barcelona

On the international yacht racing circuit we are not used to eating paella at New Year and strolling the elegant avenues of Barcelona, but then The Race is not your usual sailing event.

Approaching the Port Vell Marina down the Via Laietana, you can see two of the masts from way off. As you get closer you begin to realise that one of them is that of Club Med, while the other is her main rival, PlayStation, whose rig towers to just over 148 feet.

Even set against the buildings in the city, these are massive structures. Getting closer, all six giants, as The Race official posters describe them, come into view and one gets the sense that at last Bruno Peyron's ambitious dream has come true.

Here are six of the biggest multi-hulls ever built assembled together in the same place and about to set sail on the first ever fully-crewed non-stop round-the-world race. It has been a long and difficult road to get here for the competitors as well as for the organisers and, even now, there are voices warning that this venture could, at best, turn into a farce or, at worst, a disaster.

Comparing the boats as they lie harmlessly enough, safely tied up in the sunshine, the first thing you notice is how the three Gilles Ollier-designed cats, Club Med, Team Adventure and Innovation Explorer, appear comparatively stumpy at a mere 109 feet when set against Steve Fossett's unbelievable PlayStation which, with her extended waterline, now goes on for 125 feet.

The next thing is the rigs. It's pretty hard to ignore them and one can only imagine what scaling any of them must be like in a seaway. While the three Ollier boats sport vertically-stepped rotating wings, PlayStation and Tony Bullimore's Team Legato feature masts which are well swept back and both yachts have big high bows, all the better to prevent digging in at speed.
The next thing you notice along the quays of The Race village where thousands of people are taking time off to come and look at these great beasts, is that on Club Med and PlayStation - the only two boats properly worked up - there is very little going on, apart from children bouncing up and down on the trampolines. On all the other four there is a lot of last minute stuff, underlining just how hard it has been for them to get even this far.

Innovation Explorer has only been in the water for around two-and-a-half months. While Team Adventure has only had her hulls wet for six weeks and, prior to her delivery trip to Barcelona, her skipper Cam Lewis had managed only around 25 hours of sailing altogether. At the other end of the race village, the automatic screw-drivers are out on Team Legato which had not sailed at all before it set out on its delivery down here. Next to her, the under-funded Polish yacht, Polpharma Warta - the smallest in the fleet at just 84 feet - has also done very little since dismasting during her qualifier between Cadiz and San Salvador, and the crew have spent much of their time here re-fixing the traveller which came loose on the way down from Brittany.

However hard you try to look on the bright side and to share Peyron's optimism, it is very difficult to see how any of those four are going to get round non-stop or at all. The dream may have come alive here in Barcelona but how long can it last once the racing begins? The feeling among the large corps of journalists attending the start on Sunday, seems to be that The Race will end up being a contest between Club Med and PlayStation which, alone in this fleet, seem to have a chance of completing the course unaided.

It is going to be an interesting battle. Both yachts have talented crews and both boats have done some serious mileage. If anything, Grant Dalton and his team on Club Med have the work-up advantage because they have come to the start without the major modifications which Fossett has squeezed in on PlayStation.

The boats are quite different and it may, therefore, not be the closest of contests. PlayStation is much heavier and has a bigger sail area than Club Med. She also has a fixed mast, rather than a rotating wing. In differing conditions there should be clear performance variations between the two. According to Neal McDonald, crew-member on Club Med and madforsailing diary writer, they may be comparable in light airs but PlayStation may have the edge in medium conditions. We shall see.

The news from Bullimore hardly inspires confidence. After his troubled delivery, he remains 150 miles short of the 2,500-mile mandatory qualifying distance which he must complete in order to start within the rules. Currently Bullimore is trying to argue with the race committee that he has done enough, but he may yet have to put in two 75-mile legs out and back from the start in order to join the party.

More worrying is the crew situation on Team Legato. Four of the original delivery crew have now got off the boat after various disputes and personality clashes on the way south and Bullimore has taken on four new crew, the BBC cameraman Rob Salvidge, the Vendee skipper Richard Tolkien and two former members of the Team Philips crew, Alex Bennett and Paul Larsen.

With an untried crew and a boat which has barely been sailed, Bullimore still believes he can get round and give Club Med and PlayStation a good run for their money.