LETTER FROM AMERICA: Spirit's Swedish skipper, Johan, cut the engine and as she began to lose her momentum I turned the wheel gently to take her off the breeze, writes Patrick Smyth
Sixty feet ahead of me the yacht's bow swung left, responding as smoothly and uncomplaining as the finest of racehorses to the jockey's delicate touch. And then it lifted slightly as the sail filled, picking up the lost speed though we could barely feel the wind.
Eighty five feet above the deck, near the top of the tree-like mast, the edge of the huge grey Kevlar sail billowed slightly as I brought the boat's head back again to the wind. Too close.
But, on the water the tell-tale ripples of a squall closed on us, and again she surged forward to more open water, putting Baltimore's dockside behind her, and sending a pulse of adrenalin through each of us.
We were truly privileged. Never mind the rain, the grey day, and the faltering wind.
Baltimore last weekend and Annapolis today have been paying host to the fleet of eight super-yachts which will set out again this weekend on the seventh leg of the nine-month, 37,000-mile Volvo Ocean Race. The $15 million Volvo Ocean 60s, the only boat allowed in this race (entrance fee $500,000), are 13½ ton pure racing machines, stripped of every scintilla of luxury - definitely no G and Ts on the foredeck.
They will sail the next leg, up north to Labrador and across the top of the Atlantic in 14 days of flat-out racing to La Rochelle.
Too northerly a course and they may find themselves becalmed in the cold still air and dense fog that is often a feature of the spring weather. Too far south and they add unnecessarily to the journey. Just right, and they may hitch a ride on the warm Gulf Stream.
For now, as the 12-person crews rest up in luxury hotels to prepare for the ordeal, the VO 60s are lined up on the dockside for the public to stare at.
On Sunday over 100,000 turned out to partake in Baltimore's waterfront festival and to stare at its honoured guests.
A few of us, a very few, actually got to sail one (courtesy, in my case, of a friend's prize for her extravagance in a Bloomingdale shopping spree).
In Annapolis this weekend the crowds will be as large - last time the race stopped here in the Chesapeake, the east coast Mecca of sailing with some 180,000 registered boats, politicians estimated the turnout at 60,000 and revenue generated at $26 million.
The quadrennial race, which used to be called the Whitbread, began in September in England and has taken the boats through fields of small icebergs in the southern ocean through the doldrums of the equator and to other far corners of the earth.
It will reach the finish line in Kiel around June 8th.
Spirit, one of the VO 60s, is not actually competing but is part of the extraordinary travelling sideshow of maintenance teams and race officials that accompanies the race. But she gives a good sense of what it would be like to compete and live the race.
Below, the living quarters are dark and cramped - when she is fully provisioned and the 38 sails she carries are stowed there is barely room for the narrow berths through which the three watches rotate and into which they must be strapped.
Although she has a toilet (head) there is no shower and only a small desk for the navigator.
Rations are strictly freeze dried, for space reasons, heated on a solitary gas ring. Water is processed from the sea.
The deck is wide and flat, the size of a tennis court, room for winches and crew to haul ropes, but one gets a sense of being desperately exposed in mid-ocean.
The sails, made of Kevlar for toughness are huge - one spinnaker alone is 3,000 sq ft.
The result is speeds recorded regularly of up to 28 knots, three times that achieved by common or garden yachts.
On the sixth leg up from Miami News Corp, owned by Rupert Murdoch, took first place but overall lies fourth, behind Illbruck Challenge, Asser Abloy, and Amer Sports. Illbruck Challenge is from Germany, but the skipper is American, John Kostecki, and the crew includes six New Zealanders and one German.
Assa Abloy is Swedish, but her skipper is Briton Neal McDonald.
There are two Swedes aboard but also three Americans, two Frenchmen, two New Zealanders and an Englishman.
American Sports also claims dual-citizenship (Finland and Italy) and an all-female crew, butnone of them are from Finland or Italy.
Yet, one of the toughest races in the world pales by comparison with its most illustrious predecessor. In the 482 years since Ferdinand Magellan began the first successful circumnavigation of earth, life for round the world skippers has improved considerably.
Because his five-ship, 270-man three-year mission was financed by Spain's King Charles I, the Portuguese explorer had to use mostly Spanish crews.
The jealous captains of three of the ships were plotting to kill Magellan before the fleet left port on its route across the Atlantic.
He had to contend with several mutinies, shipwrecks, starvation and hostile natives.
And when he was almost home free, Magellan was killed in the Philippines after he intervened in a local tribal war. One ship made it home.
psmyth@irish-times.ie
