Kerry's Damian Foxall is enjoying the taste of stardom among the Barcelona crowds thronging the quayside in the build-up to Sunday's start of The Race, a circumnavigation of the globe billed as the "sailing event of the millennium". In what is a high point in Foxall's professional sailing career the 29-year-old, the sole Irish competitor, has joined the pick of sailing's elite on Steve Fossett's Playstation a 125-foot catamaran that travels in excess of 40 knots, where conventional monohull yachts rarely reach 20.
The Caherdaniel sailor is the Cat's helmsman and trimmer. He is one of 14 crew aboard Fossett's widely tipped maxiCat for the 27,000 mile race. The six-boat fleet consists of Playstation (Steve Fossett); Club Med (Grant Dalton); Innovation Explorer (Loick Peyron); Team Adventure (Cam Lewis); Polpharma-Warta (Roman Paszke) and Team Legato (Tony Bullimore)
The rules are simple: there are no restrictions, simply a start and finish line and a course round the world. But the razzamatazz of Barcelona's quayside belies the fear held by many what the notorious Southern Ocean will bring and just how these 21st century yacht designs will cope with the worst that nature has to throw at them.
Already, Pete Goss's Atlantic failure has been well publicised. His doomed Team Phillips craft was abandoned and lost without trace 800 miles off the Irish west coast in its final sea trials this month. The Englishman and his crew were rescued by a passing ship but the reputation of the design lies in tatters.
In order to cope with the extreme conditions that will be encountered, designers have been pushing the envelope of accepted tolerances. As the start date grew closer boats have been hauled ashore and had larger bows fitted in an effort to stop the huge craft burying in the mountainous seas.
Playstation has been lengthened at the bow and stern to 125 feet overall, making it the biggest and possibly the fastest boat in the fleet.
Leading commentators are saying that it could easily turn into a tortoise and hare race and with such a small fleet and the high gear damage expected there might only be one finisher. It's not a totally unlikely scenario.
Along side in Marina Port Vell, Barcelona today (Friday) final checks of the six boats are being completed. Foxall is responsible for Playstation's safety inventory, equipment that he hopes he will never use.
For the past three years Foxall has been ploughing a lonely furrow on the French single-handed Figaro circuit becoming the first Irish entry into the gruelling competition and the first non-French entry to win a leg. It was through his connections on this circuit that he got his chance to sail in The Race.
But what a difference a year makes. Rubbing shoulders with 13 of sailing's greatest, all with sailing CVs as long as your arm it is an indication of Foxall's growing stature on the world circuit that he was hand picked by renowned Balloonist and adventurer Steve Fossett.
Foxall recounts a transatlantic passage earlier this summer during sea trials when, because of favourable flat seas, he covered half the Atlantic in three days. Another Irish man Enda O'Coineen, a crew panel member on Team adventure also speaks of hitting 35 knots (approximately 50kmph) in sea trials: "It's sailing on the edge," said O'Coineen.
Foxall admits that life on board is a white knuckle ride and the physical movement of the hulls he has termed `atrocious'. Especially upwind.
