Notice of race published

Extra media person for all legs, more crew on women's boats, pro-am races and more on the course

Volvo Ocean Race have published the Notice of Race for their next event in 2008-9. As previously announced the start of the race will be from Alicante, southern Spain on 11 October 2008 with an in-port race a week before. The event as a whole will wind up on or around 20 June 2009.

While there seems to be some flexibility over this the NoR claims the Volvo Ocean Race 2008-9 will comprise 11 legs, eight in-port races plus the new addition of eight pro-am races. According to Race Director Andy Hindley these will be a jolly, boats having celebrity and VIP guests on board, probably held the day after each in-port race. Results in the pro-am race don't count in the overall points tally for the race but the organisers are 'encouraging' participation to the extent that points will be docked from teams not taking part unless they have exceptionally good reason. Otherwise the scoring remains the same as last time with a mixture of points for legs, in-port races and scoring waypoints, with, rightly or wrongly, no weighting between shorter and longer legs.

While by no means finalised, details of the course are being fleshed out and Andy Hindley says they are hoping to have all the port agreements finalised in the next three months or by the mid-summer latest.

Thankfully a stopover in South Africa has been added, as previously the first leg direct from Spain to the Middle East via the Cape of Good Hope would have been ridiculously long. Andy Hindley says that there is also a possibility of going from China to a stopover in Australia or New Zealand that currently doesn't feature:

Leg 1: Alicante to South Africa via Fernando da Noronja scoring waypoint
Leg 2: South Africa to the Middle East via a scoring waypoint at 20degS (they are talking to four ports in the Middle East)
Leg 3: Middle East to India (they are talking to Mumbai, Goa or Kochi)
Leg 4: India to South East Asia, leaving Palau Weh, Indonesia to port (Singapore or Malaysia)
Leg 5: South East Asia to China (port 1- Shanghai?) - this will be pitstop rather a full-on stopover
Leg 6: China to China (port 2 - Qingdao?)
Leg 7: China to Brazil via scoring waypoints at 36degS and at Cape Horn
Leg 8: Brazil to USA leaving Fernando da Noronja to port, also a scoring waypoint
Leg 9: USA to Western Europe via a scoring waypoint on the longitude of St John, Newfoundland (France, UK, Holland or Ireland)
Leg 10: Western Europe to Sweden (Gothenberg or Stockholm)
Leg 11: Sweden to the finish (likely to be elsewhere in Sweden, Russia, Finland or Germany)

As Hindley puts it while there may seem to be a lot of options, having the basic route more or less finalised should not affect teams in terms of their design and development at this stage. "It won’t make any difference to the way you approach your program. It’s just where you book your hotels."

In the Notice of Race, Volvo have also published leg start dates and according to Andy Hindley evident from these are that the time in port is much reduced compared to last time - once again an attempt to reduce campaign costs. "We also want to promote that robustness. If you have a short stopover you don’t have time to initiate horrendous repairs on your boat, so you have to build your boat solidly from the start," he says.

Volvo will once again be providing all the weather to boats during the race rather than allowing the costly Internet free-for-all as occurred two races ago.

One of the most dramatic changes from the last race will be to the crew. Crew numbers for male teams remains the same except that all boats are now obliged to carry a media/environmental non-sailors on ALL legs. An attempt was made to do this in the last race but the 'media person' ended up instead being a 10th crewman with 'media responsibilities'. The new arrangement may prove awkward for the teams but should dramatically improve the quality of the media material coming off the boats and Volvo is to be applauded for making this move. Quite how this is policed will be a thorny issue. "They are effectively a crew member but they can’t participate in the sailing. If they do in any way and we find out we’re not going to hold back," says Hindley. Now all we need is live TV....

In an attempt to get some fresh blood into the race, on all boats 30% of the crew must now be under 30 come start day. However there is an interesting exception - 30% of the crew must be under 30, unless all the crew are over 50 come start day! Thus an OAP team is possible.

With the brute force required to sail a Volvo Open 70 the number of crew in female or mixed teams has been increased. One additional crew is allowed if at least five of the crew are women, while an all-women's team can sail with 14 including the media person. It is believed that movistar may be looking to field an all-female team this time, so we will watch this with interest.

The only other significant addition to the Notice of Race and one that will be particularly resonant following the loss of Hans Horrevoets in the last race, is the inclusion of a new man overboard alerting system as recently featured on the TV series Dragon's Den. The Mermaid-id from First Light Solutions has a couple of significant advantages over existing systems in that it is passive - the current units worn by crews work on a repeated proximity radio transmission whereby if a crew is no longer within a certain distance of the base station an alarm is sounded. The problem with this is that the units worn by crew are always on and regularly run out of battery power. They also sound an alarm when a carbon fibre bulkhead lies between the crewman and the base station. The Mermaid id works with sonar requiring a through-hull fitting for the transducer, but has the additional advantage of recording the GPS position within 2 seconds of a MOB incident as well as the ID of the wearer. "The US Coastguard did a study that showed that 95% of people will be found if you record their GPS position," says Andy Hindley.

While at present only Ericsson and Mean Machine have announced projects Hindley reckons they at present have six teams secure with another four serious ones waiting in the wings.

To date Peter de Ridder's Mean Machine led by Ray Davies on a Judel-Vrolijk VO70 has been announced along with a new Ericsson led by John Kostecki and a new boat designed by Juan Kouyoumdjian. There remains a rumour that Ericsson may field a second boat. Movistar are also said to be announcing shortly, also with a two boat team that will presumably be EF/Amer Sport-style, with male and female teams. Torben Grael and Alan Adler's Brazilian team have significant funding but not enough to announce as yet.

Following on from the last race, Volvo are keen to marry teams with stopover ports and with so much time being spent in the Middle East and Asia there are some good prospects of teams from these areas of the world.

Full Notice of Race here: