Strolling into Thunderbolt Marina straight off the plane I spotted Sanya’s 105-foot mast towering above the billionaire pleasure craft around her. The sail team had also arrived on my flight and I felt a bit of a lemon as the fly boys caught up with the shore crew who had been rebuilding Sanya here for a few weeks. After a quick team get-together we were told a shallow sandbank at the end of the Savannah river meant our 4m draft would prevent us from leaving till the next day. So with a lethal concoction of jet leg and anxiety coursing through me I headed to our hotel and didn’t sleep a wink.
Being bred on South African waters and starved of real yachts the Volvo boats are massive. The dimensions. The sounds. The loads. Even the speed. It’s all been super-sized. The beam is the size of my day sailor, the mast disappears into low clouds, and the length challenges even the surest of sights. When her wardrobe is unpacked she’ll be flying over seven hundred square meters of sail, all of it hand crafted from the lightest, most expensive material known to man. The mast, boom, rigging, hull, even the bunk tubes are all fashioned from carbon fibre. In all it means a Volvo boat is as strong, light and fast as modern man knows how, and when in the hands of a veteran crew like the predominantly Kiwi gang on Sanya, she’s a brutally expensive weapon.
For most, down below in a Volvo boat is as foreign a place as the inside of a space capsule to a bushman. It’s sparse. In fact there is no inside. The galley is a camping stove, the john is open to all and like sitting on a swinging teapot, and the accommodation is gauze netting hung from the ceiling with expensive string. The brig on the Bounty was more luxurious, and probably smelled better as Volvo men don’t bathe. Get near one of them when they get in from three weeks at sea and you’ll never eat Camembert again. From where I was loading my kit into my bunk the topside was looking like a much more inviting option and I quickly climbed back on deck as we left the Thunderbolt yard to waves and hoots from the locals. To clear the sand bank they canted the high tech keel up forty degrees, and we turned south onto one eight zero just inside of the opposite flowing gulf stream.
With 10 knots on our port beam our speed rose to 15 knots as the apparent shifted fo'ard and sucked us along. It was warm on deck and all was dry. It wasn’t long after sundown that the absence of the Sandman from the night before took hold, and since I wasn’t part of the watch system I selfishly squeezed my way to the stern bunks and crashed – out like a light, to be woken by a crash.
My sub-conscious argued with my conscious as I drowsily tried to discern why a troop of mad monkeys thrashing drums and firing .45’s had been let loose down here. This was a cacophony. Each ease of the hyper strung mainsheet on the massive carbon winches just above me shot through the highly strung super structure of the hull with an ear bursting crack, and was followed by a deep thud as the bow ploughed through the wave the trimmer was slowing up for. With no insulation or comfy saloon the naked interior was like an acoustic nightmare, every sound amplified and channeled through the taught casing of the hull. You're acutely aware if something gives on this highly-strung beast someone’s gonna get hurt.
As the reality of being on a Volvo boat sunk in I lay nervously listening to the rushing water above me, deliberating over whether I really needed to go up on deck yet. My mind was made up for me when skipper Mike Sanderson mockingly kicked my bunk and said in his thick kiwi accent, “Get out there you ‘effing pansy photographer. You're missing all the good stuff.”
My peek aft through the companion way was met with a mocking cheer which was drowned out by a wave of water that descended the cabin into darkness. It looked grey, wet and cold, and I couldn’t wait.
I’d watched this scene a thousand times when making films for the race and wondered what it was really like. I stepped up and found out as I was instantly crushed into submission by a wall of gulf-stream forcing me to my knees. Clinging to my camera, I bobbed and weaved (OK, crawled) my way aft till I took up station behind the veteran helmsmen Richard Mason. I’d gone from the suffocating and oppressive confines below into a manic bombardment of the senses. The ocean was rushing by faster than my crusty eyes could focus, and horizontal water was being forced into every forward-facing orifice. The masthead zero was taut, the staysail stiff, and there was a single reef in the main, and we were thundering. Most boats I’ve sailed on either bob with the water, or at least slow down when they jam into a steep one. But other boats aren’t 14-ton juggernauts and the Atlantic was panicking to get out the way. My Volvo Ocean Race foul weather gear was as useful as a pair of speedo as the deck of Sanya was washed with the ocean.
One of my tasks on board had been to make a web film about Sanya’s Media Crew Member, Shifty or Andreas Soriano, and since he was heading up front filming in the bow wave, I followed. As Andreas confidently made his way to the bow I tripped, rolled and crawled behind him till I arrived at the pointy and dangerous end of the boat. A bow wave traveling at 30 knots is a heavy weight, and several times I was punched across the deck, once into the sharp side of a daggerboard. It was impossible to keep my eyes open so I aimed vaguely, hoping Shifty was in the picture somewhere. Shot bagged or not I headed aft and just as I passed the grinders Sanya leapt, and an All Black collected me in a wave that rolled me across the deck, taking a new sailing shoe with it. Watching it wash away I made for the high ground on the windward side only to be tackled by the Atlantic again, this time losing a chunk of my now bare foot to a deck fitting. The unsympathetic laughs meant I thought better of wincing to the crew, and I watched silently as the brownish red trail ebbed from my foot across the deck.
By now the crew and Sanya were in perfect harmony and not even the mighty Ocean Liners carrying puzzled holidaymakers south could keep up with us as we waved to them passing by. Bewildered, I just sat on the rail trying to absorb every second of this masterclass as Sanya continued to thrash towards to the horizon, dragging Miami into sight. In just under 24 hours we’d swallowed 410 nautical miles of Atlantic.
Sanya’s return to the race was a huge deal and our arrival at the Race Village three days after the last boat racing was met with the biggest welcome from Miami yet. Even my colleagues had made up a welcome sign to welcome me in from my initiation, and hearing my name boom from the Village speakers to Sanya’s theme song "Eye of the Tiger" will remain with me forever – just like the scar on my leg.
If you still think you could do the toughest job in journalism, send a resume and covering letter to reporters@volvooceanrace.com
Source, Volvo Ocean Race Media
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