AROUND THE WORLD FROM SEVEN GROUPS

All you need to know about this round-the-world crewed sailing race – what is the event about, when it takes place, where it goes, who is taking part and what is that fancy boat you’ve seen in photos.

What is the Volvo Ocean Race?It’s the leading round-the-world sailing race for teams, with a series of stops that give fans the chance to experience the In-Port Race series. It began life in 1973 and was then known as the Whitbread. Today it is sailing's biggest offshore race and one of the most coveted prizes in the sport. It lasts for nearly nine months - it’s the longest sport event in the world.

For more information on the history of the race, check out our Memories section.

When is the next edition?The 12th edition of the Volvo Ocean Race will start from Alicante, Spain on October 4, 2014. The race will finish in Gothenburg, Sweden with a final in-port race on June 27, 2015. Check out our easy-to-read table with exact dates.

What is the route?11 ports, 38,739 nautical miles - for a quick overview of the route, go the the Route section. The route map is available here.

Where can I learn about the sailors?Seven teams will cross the start line in October in Alicante:

Team SCA, the first all-female team to compete in the race since 2001-02.
Abu Dhabi Ocean Racing, back for a second race with British skipper Ian Walker.
Dongfeng Race Team from China, skippered by Frenchman Charles Caudrelier.
Team Brunel from the Netherlands, skippered by race veteran Bouwe Bekking.
Team Alvimedica with a double flag Turkey/USA, skippered by American youngster Charlie Enright.
A Spanish team, whose main title sponsor has yet to be revealed, skippered by Iker Martínez.
Team Vestas Wind from Denmark, skippered by Australian sailor Chris Nicholson.

Tell me about the boat:The new one-design Volvo Ocean 65 is the boat that will be used for the next two editions of the Volvo Ocean Race. There is a whole section about this radical, high-performance, world-class, tough, affordable boat here.

This is great, but where can I find the rules?You can find the official Notice of Race and Class Rule for the Volvo Ocean 65 on the Race Noticeboard.

How do I contact the Volvo Ocean Race?Whatever your needs, try contacting one of the people in this list.

NOW YOU SEE IS WHAT THESE GROUPS WITH THE FIRST AMAZONES

1) TEAM SCA

All-female sailing team could be a game changer in round-the-world race

Team SCA is focused on succeeding in the competition, but the members also hope to encourage more mixed-race crews

An all-female sailing crew will set out on a grueling round-the-world race on Saturday, and although the team is focused simply on the competition, its success could open the door for more women to join Volvo Ocean Race crews, which have generally been all male.

The team, named SCA for its Swedish sponsor, is the fifth all-female boat in the quadrennial contest’s 41-year history. This year all crews will be sailing identical boats: 65-foot monohulls. Modifications are not allowed, so architecture and materials won’t determine victory; athletes will.

The women of Team SCA see this as the best chance an all-female team has had at succeeding, and they hope that if they do, it will encourage more mixed-gender teams in future races.

“In my eyes, this is the first time an all-female team has been given all it takes to go out and try to win,” said Liz Wardley, 34, of Papua New Guinea.

The seven teams competing in the Volvo Ocean Race will leave from the eastern coast of Spain to navigate fierce Mediterranean storms, piracy threats, fishing nets, icebergs, the brutal Southern Ocean and the complicated waters where Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 is believed to have disappeared in March. The race covers 38,739 nautical miles — nearly twice the earth’s circumference.

“It’s a very, very, very physical operation. It’s not just pure strength but endurance,” said Neal McDonald, a veteran of five Volvo races whose wife, Lisa, skippered the last all-female team, in 2001–02. Its boat broke a mast between Baltimore and La Rochelle, France; it rejoined the race and finished last.

Tacking the boat, or changing direction, which could happen 10 times a day, requires moving two to three tons of gear by hand while the boat’s platform is bouncing around the ocean. That means lifting 40,000 to 60,000 pounds per day on six hours of sleep or less.

Sailing team — Team SCA in the Round Britain Island Race in August 2014.

To compensate for inherent strength differences, the women’s crew is allowed 11 sailors on board at once. All-male crews are limited to eight.

McDonald, who now works for rival crew Abu Dhabi Ocean Racing, said, “There are some very good sailors on SCA, and they’ve got more of them. They should be a force to be reckoned with, but we won’t know till the end.”

Living quarters would be tight for eight and even tighter for 11 people. It’s cramped, damp and stuffy and jokingly referred to as the carbon coffin. Every meal is freeze-dried and prepared in a sink and stove in a galley that is smaller than an office cubicle. Sleep shifts never exceed four hours, and sailors belt themselves into their bunks to avoid being violently ejected while the vessel tilts, creaks and whines to a roar. One change of clothes is allowed — never mind bathing.

The boats will stop in 11 countries on five continents, including one U.S. stop in Newport, Rhode Island, in May. After nine offshore legs — long races from country to country — and 10 in-port races — one-day races held in each port — whoever reaches Gothenburg, Sweden, by June 27 with the fewest points is the winner.

More than 400 women applied when SCA’s recruitment began in the fall of 2012.

“There were no obvious choices,” said Joca Signorini, SCA’s Brazilian coach. “It’s not like you were putting together a male team and would perhaps try to find some of the guys who had done the last race.”

SCA’s sailors hail from five nations. Three are Olympians; three competed in the last all-female Volvo team, in 2001–02; one is a sailmaker by trade; one has an engineering degree from Cambridge University; and another was a rower who helped Cambridge beat Oxford in the women’s version of the annual Boat Race on the River Thames. Two are sisters. Three have children. A few, like Dee Caffari, have circumnavigated the globe several times nonstop single-handedly.

In fact, Caffari, 41, is the only woman in history to have sailed solo around the globe in both directions. The “wrong” way took 178 days, she said of her 2006 westward voyage. The eastward route took half the time. But the Volvo Ocean Race lasts nine months.

“This is easier,” Caffari said of the Volvo race, because sailors get a break on shore between stages. But the intensity is higher.

“Volvo is three-week sprints,” she said. “The nonstop is a marathon. [In Volvo] you can’t miss anything. It’s all or nothing for three weeks, get to the finish line, sort out all the problems, have a rest, then do it again.”

U.S. Olympian Sally Barkow, 34, has had to make the opposite adjustment. The Wisconsin native has focused on in-shore racing for the past 10 years. “What I’d been doing was 20-minute match races or even one-to-two-hour races,” she said. “This is a totally different concept.”

And Annie Lush, 34, the Cambridge rower and an Olympic sailor, was used to 12-minute races. “It was like stadium racing, basically. Now I’m in the middle of the ocean with a whale to shout at you.” The biggest adjustment she found on the trans-Atlantic crossing was that “while you’re sleeping, someone else is working. I’d feel kind of guilty to rest in my off time if someone else was doing something.”

Abby Ehler during the 2014 Round Britain Island Race.

As with Tour de France teams, each crew is backed by a sponsor, which provides a $9 million to $14 million investment over two years, according to the race’s CEO, Knut Frostad. SCA was the first to sign on, specifically looking to create an all-female team because 80 percent of its retail customers are women.

The early investment meant that this spring, while most teams were still choosing crew members and some didn’t even have a boat, Team SCA already had its three coaches, 12 sailors and the chance to test equipment and team dynamics on an ocean crossing.

“We’ve got no excuses this time,” Wardley said. “We’ve got the best resources, the best coaches.”

Despite some gender parity in high-stakes sailing events, including Olympic sailing and the America’s Cup, the Volvo Ocean Race is still male-dominated. The last time a woman participated in the Volvo race was in 2005, when Adrienne Cahalan navigated on Brasil 1 for the first leg of the race.

Crew member Abby Ehler, 41, said, “It comes down to opportunity. You would almost never get a chance to do this with a mixed team because [some think] there are just not the girls with the experience or physical strength to be worth a spot on a men’s boat. Since the opportunity hasn’t been there for so many years, it kind of has to be an all-female team. And it has to be run properly to ensure that we can prove ourselves and be competitive.”

Ehler’s hope is that the team will prove a strong competitor — even if it’s not at the top of the results board — and will be taken seriously. “It’s just a relief, from a sailor’s point of view, that we’re not just there as media tokens,” she said.

Caffari said, “I think this is the first step toward mixed teams being the norm.”

“You almost need to make this huge impact so in the next edition everyone maybe considers a mixed team because we proved we can do it. I think the shock tactic is going to help.”

2) ABU DHABI

Ian Walker is back at the helm of Azzam - Arabic for ‘determination'. The Emirati syndicate has the experience, talent and drive to succeed this time around. A strong contender.

Ian Walker’s Abu Dhabi Ocean Racing crew for the Volvo Ocean Race 2014-15 is a potent blend of experience and exciting new talent which includes several familiar faces from the last campaign as well as some newcomers.

New race rules have reduced the number of sailors from 11 down to just eight this time around. However, just like last time the teams will have an on board reporter to keep our fans up to date with everything that goes on while Azzam is at sea.

Donning Abu Dhabi crew uniforms for the second consecutive time are under-30 helmsman and trimmer Adil Khalid (United Arab Emirates), navigator and helmsman Simon Fisher (Great Britain) and bowman Justin Slattery (Ireland).

Making their first appearances in ADOR colours are helmsman and trimmer Phil Harmer (Australia), pitman & boat captain Daryl Wislang (New Zealand) and under-30 bowman and helmsman Luke Parkinson (Australia).

Completing Walker’s lineup is Spanish sailing legend and five-time Volvo Ocean Race veteran Roberto Bermudez de Castro. Better known as ‘Chuny’, the Spaniard has and amazing pedigree in the race, having finished outside the top three on only one occasion in his five campaigns.

The team’s second under-30 sailor is Australia’s Luke Parkinson whose track record includes a an Olympic 49er campaign and representing his country at the 2014 Red Bull Youth America’s Cup in San Francisco. In contrast to his crewmates, this will be Parkinson’s first ever Volvo Ocean Race.

Backing up the sailing team in a non-sailing coaching capacity is ADOR Performance Manager Neal McDonald, one of the most highly respected round the world sailors who has five Volvo Ocean Races to his name.

3) DONGFENG

Dongfeng means “the eastern wind” and this ambitious Chinese team, skippered by Frenchman Charles Caudrelier, is represented by a crew that is half Chinese, half international.

RACE TEAM

It takes strong men to be able to compete in the Volvo Ocean Race and there is no doubt that, thanks to these men, the heart of Dongfeng Race Team beats strongly. "We know we're not in the same league as our competitors yet. We don't expect to be. But I believe our team has a fire within, a quiet determination that will show itself gradually as the race progresses. The gap will close and I hope our team will be the team that constantly surprises throughout." - Charles Caudrelier.

Most of the time our sailors are miles from anyone and anywhere and they would love to hear from you. Sometimes those small messages of support mean the world of difference during a tough day at sea! See below the individual email addresses or send a general message of support to the team by emailing: messageofsupport@dongfengraceteam.com