The Volvo Round The World Yatch Race

[blx]

for the past 2 months i've been enthralled by the wonders of Virtual Spectator and the Round the World yatch race currently taking place. The new boats have been designed to be the fastest ocean going sailing ships around and already records have tumbled as a consequence.

At the start of the race many feared that these boats were way too fast and that lives are at risk. Thankfully as its turned out so far, the captains have'nt endangered anyone and pull back when the going gets hairy.

Im not kidding you, these boats literally fly off the crest of waves and smack through the back of the next wave in front of it sending a wall of water down the deck. Combine this with heavy fog, strong biting winds, icebergs, and all the other southern ocean dangers and you soon realise how extreme this race has become. Theres been an incident where one boat was struck by a huge shark which somehow caught itself on the rudder. Lucky for the crew it managed to free itself! 

The Australian entrant captained by Morningtons own, Grant Wharington, is ING Brunel which came 5th on the first leg from Portugal to South Africa.

With the second leg (Cape Town to Melbourne) well underway were sitting 5th again but the leading boats have a hard hard slog upwind across the bight from Albany,WA. at this moment were positioned 900 miles astern of the leader but right ahead of a front which will hopefully whoosh us up to albany so who knows.

Our boys are doing us proud as theyre up against multi-million dollar teams who've been preparing for this race for a hell of alot longer and with alot more money to spend. Still its a real buzz watching and reading the emails from the boats. The leading pack is due in Melbourne from thursday onward and our boys will be a few days behind (at this point) so were currently looking at them getting in around sat/sun.

For anyone interested heres the link to the website. http://www.volvooceanrace.org/index.aspx and the melbourne stopover is at http://www.melbournestopover.com.au/2005-2006/.

download Virtual Spectator from here http://content.volvooceanrace.org/VS/ViewerDownload/Volvo2005Setup1_0_5_0.exe and watch the boats in 3D 

or even better still, get down to Waterfront City and cheer our boys into their home port when they arrive 

[mightytiges]

The day the AFL tv rights were awarded to Seven/Ten, I was down at Waterfront City having a look at a couple of the Sydney-Hobart boats that had returned. Know nothing about sailing myself but the technology that goes into building these ocean-racing boats is bloody impressive.

[Ox]

Yeah Bllxxxxxxx,

I saw a special on the race.
It showed what those sick fukcos go through.
Legends

It ended with the voiceover of a guy that had left the sport.
He was all like, "I hate it!".
Said after his shift was over at the helm he would go down to the hull and just pretend he was somewhere else.
LMAOOO.
Absolutely psychos'.

[Moi]

Just heard an interview on radio and they were saying they have to put these boats on their sides to get them under the West Gate.  Surely, i misheard.  Must be some big whopping boats 

[blx]

Just heard an interview on radio and they were saying they have to put these boats on their sides to get them under the West Gate.  Surely, i misheard.  Must be some big whopping boats 

they are 70 footers as opposed to the 140 footers of days gone by so they're relatively alot smaller 

If the media have been saying the westgate then they either have been misinformed or have misconstrued the information.as far as i know, its the bolte bridge which they will have to be 'leant over' to get under due to their high mast. Either way, its all good publicity.

they're not too far away now, bout 200 miles offshore. heading down to waterfront city later on tonight, cant wait.

[tiga]

Ahhh Brings back memories of the days I used to buzz around Albert Park Lake in my Herron trying to beat those bloody light weight Mirror's with their big fancy spinnakers. Talk about an exercise in futility.