MAKING WAVES:Starting this week, the Groupama 4 crew manager and watch leader will provide an insider's account of all the drama of the Volvo Ocean Race until the finish next July in Galway

THIS IS it, the final countdown. In less than four days we’ll be racing hard to leave Alicante far astern as all six boats sprint southwards towards the Straits of Gibraltar on leg one of the Volvo Ocean Race.

We’ll be leaving behind what is certain to be a huge send-off from this 3,000-year-old port city and, more especially, saying farewell to our families who have been living with us since we moved here from Lorient just over a month ago.

The first farewell is always the hardest, particularly for the youngest children who have to deal with the din of the crowds and the suspicion that they won’t be seeing their Dads that evening, whatever about the next three weeks. There will be plenty of tears and it won’t just be the children who’ll be upset.

In truth though, we’ll be more than happy to get going on Groupama 4 and get stuck into the 6,500-mile stage to Cape Town. Last weekend saw the first In-Port Race in which we hardly covered ourselves in glory; fifth place and beaten for fourth by Mike “Moose” Sanderson on Team Sanya, the only second generation boat in this edition of the race and which was Telefonica Blue last time out and won the majority of the short inshore courses. Although these races only count for one fifth of those points awarded for a full oceanic stage, a podium result would have been a nice morale boost.

Instead, my old skipper Ian Walker and crew-mate Justin Slattery from our Green Dragon days delivered a great result on their Abu Dhabi entry with a win by almost 15 minutes in a race that was barely an hour long.

That’s the second win against us since Walker pipped us at the line at Plymouth in the Fastnet Race last August. We’ve had a few tough training days for the In-Port racing. Saturday’s race was light and shifty but that’s no excuse, we still made some bad mistakes that we’ll have to address. But this is a very long race and we just have to focus on the big legs ahead.

Our skipper Franck Cammas is one of France’s best-known sailors and has brought the massive organisational firepower of the Groupama team to this, his latest trans-oceanic foray and first French flagged entry since La Poste in 1994.

It seems like we had barely finished racing Green Dragon when I was recruited for the crew-manager and watch-leader roles by Cammas exactly two years ago. We hit the ground running by acquiring Ericsson 4 that won the last race and crucially, securing Killian Bushe from Cork as our boat-builder: he has built the last three race winners and he’s the go-to expert for ocean race boats.

Since we launched our brand new boat almost six months ago, we’ve refined our team set-up both afloat and ashore to develop as many routines as possible ahead of our first full test.

It’s been suggested that 70 per cent of the effort that goes into winning this race takes place before the actual start and in a way this is true. We feel very comfortable with what we’ve prepared for offshore but the test of all that is about to begin.

From Saturday afternoon at 2pm local time we are looking at gales in the Alvoran Sea abating to leave us beating the whole way to Gibraltar and into the open ocean. By next Wednesday, we will race along the coast of Morocco towards the Canaries and onwards to the Cape Verde islands. In 2008, this was where we really needed the missing weight in Green Dragon’s keel. Only Ian Moore’s brilliant tactical move that allowed us cross the equator ahead of the fleet and finish first at the Fernando de Noronha scoring-gate saved the day.

Later, in the third week at sea crossing the South Atlantic towards Cape Town,Torben Grael set a 24-hour speed sailing record of 598.6 nautical miles on E4, the space of ocean where the youth crew produced a previous record in the 2005 race on ABN AMRO 2. Will the record fall this year and the psychological barrier of a 600-mile day for a monohull yacht be passed? Very probably.

These third generation boats are at least three per cent faster than before so it’s possible. The real question is whether the crews can physically withstand the battering and inevitable minor injuries that occur from being swept around the decks by waves moving at 70 kph.

The constant demands of normal sailing duties – steering, trimming, grinding and most demanding of all, stacking and restacking of heavy wet sails to maximise the righting-moment and trim of the boat are tough enough before the added pressure of staying on board and safe are added to the mix. The crews who hold their nerve longest will be the record holders and podium winners in Cape Town.

Race historians point out that the winner of leg one inevitably emerges as the overall winner. I’m not so sure this time because these boats have all been so well refined from three versions of design that the actual differences between the five new boats are likely to be small enough. Sanderson’s Team Sanya will be a benchmark in this respect.

But all that is set to unfold in the next three weeks and later on in the remaining eight legs of the race before we finish in Galway at the beginning of July next year.

In the next three days we have various final checks to perform and sponsor duties to fulfil. Hopefully, we’ll have a half-day on Friday to spend time with Suzy-Ann, Oisín and Neave before I pack my small personal bag.

Here’s what I’ll be taking for the next three weeks: pair of boots, pair of light shoes, foul-weather gear, foul weather gear warm conditions, heavy fleece – top and bottom, light fleece – top and bottom, two sets of merino wool thermals, pair of socks and underwear for every third day, passport, credit card, driving licence, plus USB key with personal and professional information to go in our grab bag, knife, Leatherman, tape, press light and head-torch/batteries, personal wash-kit including lanolin cream – vital to stop hands cracking, sunglasses plus spare set, Tilly hat, Balaclava, divers gloves and spare dry set in case of injury to hand, spray on ‘second skin’ for minor cuts, toothbrush, Beluga balaclava from Quebec – fleece inside, rubber exterior, seven sets of travel pillows and sleeping-bag shared between us, three slabs of Turron Spanish nougat – added by Oisín and Neave for treats, family photo, notebook and pencil.

In the early days of ocean racing, creature comforts such as books, music and even a daily beer ration was the norm. All those personal touches are gone in today’s weight-conscious race that will have us on a non-stop diet of freeze-dried food and vitamin supplements.

This time next week, all going to plan we hope to be blasting along in the trade-winds – most likely nip and tuck with the other crews. Let the quest begin.

In conversation with David Branigan