Volvo Ocean Race: The Most Technologically Advanced Around the World Odyssey

October 24, 2014. Onboard Team Vestas Wind. Nicolai Sehested cleans the cockpit up as waves break over.

The fleet just arrived this weekend in Auckland, New Zealand, known as the City of Sails, and one of the spiritual homes of sailing, at roughly the halfway point of the Volvo Ocean Race…

The Volvo Ocean Race is the Earth’s preeminent around the world sailing race. This year marks the 12th edition of this expedition, which started off in Alicante, Spain back in October. It’s literally nine races all wrapped into one, with it being held every three years. Seven teams ship towards six continents, spanning oceans through boats manufactured purely for extreme speed–all other amenities serving inconsequential purposes. A high stakes voyage that inclement weather conditions and riptide waves engulf every step of the way–the nexus of distress and death.

The ultimate standings are not a composite of the cumulative time; such a format is akin to other long distance quests, like cycling’s Tour de France. In this sport, rather, each boat is determined a point value consistent to its respective finish at the culmination of a given leg of the trip. So, if a certain boat lands first in a city, it will be granted a single point; the goal being that the team with “least” cumulative total arises as the winner. The scoring system, thus, functioning more like Formula One. Here, though, a team isn’t permitted to move up the rankings in the event that it cannot finish any one leg, but they’re accepted back once it reaches the starting line again.

The evolution of technology within the race has emerged through the years, too.

Once dubbed as Whitbread Round the World Race, the Volvo Ocean Race has really infused technological elements over its four decades of history, dating back to 1973. What initiated as an around the world adventure for predominantly amateur sailors on large cruising yachts, has materialized into a completely professionalized race entity, with cutting-edge racing machines made from the most advanced materials available in the world. Boat construction, pertaining to design and its materials, is light-years ahead of how it used to be constituted. Onboard, the boats now feature the most technologically advanced communications, be it for navigation and media equipment at the sailor’s disposal. Of course, these added expenditures were not always present in the nascent phase of this event. It’s during the past decade, by and large, that the tech movement has taken form, including insofar as putting cameras on the boats.

Design–arguably over any other facet–plays an instrumental role into the yachts, with respects to positively and negatively impacting the race.

When asked about the design considerations, Bjorn Alberts, Communications Director of Volvo Ocean Race, tells SportTechie live from one of the boats: “That’s a loaded question–one of the biggest we deal with in the race.”

After the past two decades, they have undergone vast design changes. Alberts mentions that during the 1990s, the boats’ designs were standardized with the Whitbread 60s. Then in the latter half of the 2000s, specifically the races in 2006, 2009, and 2012, the governing body deployed the “Volvo Open 70 Box Rule” design; the operative term being “box” since teams could craft their ships under these new parameters.

“The Volvo Open 70 were the fastest ocean racing boats on the planet with a canting keel,” says Alberts.

“This canting keel was one of the biggest innovations in sailing–and allowed for incredible speeds. It also created incredible loads; and the initial designs really impacted the 2006-06 race, with a lot of problems in the keel box,” Alberts continued.

The boats would go on to be improved over the next two editions; but, for 2014-15, the decision was made to go with a single-design, which would enhance the durability of the boats, while lowering the cost at the same time.

This lone-design approach proves to be a pivotal juncture for the vitality of the sport.

Again, the Volvo Ocean 65 model strived to lower the cost to entry into the race and to construct a boat that would structurally withstand the rigors of a race circumambulating the world. The 2011-12 race had too many issues with the boats–to the extent that something had to be done to address them. The Volvo Ocean Race team went out to form a consortium of designers, builders, and boat suppliers, which had to make at least half a dozen boats from the same design that the participating teams could purchase to use for the race. Through building several boats, they were able to lower the overall cost.

At the results of these efforts, Volvo Ocean Race effectively cut the price to compete in the race for sponsors by 50 percent, while, too, creating a level playing field by having boats that were all the same from the starting line.

Conversely, everything that’s brought into the boats are weighed in order to ensure some of them don’t have additional stacks for better stability. All participants possess the same software as well; it’s not permissible to have bespoken software whatsoever, either. Such changes reflect some of the larger issues facing sailing teams, in terms of spending funds on research and development–influencing the way sailors competed.

“Some in the sailing community were critical of the new one-design, saying that we would lose some of the R&D component of the race and boat design. And we recognize that R&D has always been part of the sport, but we’ve found that there’s been a lot to learn by working together,” states Alberts.

In yesteryears, it’s been a foregone conclusion that the teams who had the time and resources to begin their work well in advance–building two boats for testing and training–held a significant edge over the others. The 2005-06 and 2008-09 events marked two incidents that exemplified the discrepancy, where teams with two boats ended up winning the race.

“That was probably the biggest advantage we previously had. It’s the same in car racing: teams with multiple cars are able to more testing, tweaks, and improve their speed over time,” Alberts says.

The implementation of a one-boat rule coupled with the design of the Volvo Ocean 65 places an emphasis and onus back on the sailors and their respective sailing ability.

Volvo Ocean Race’s Chief Executive Officer, Knut Frustad, determined these policy changes, where there wouldn’t be another race without this new design directive going forward. Team budgets for the most recent race prior to this current one doled out anywhere between $25 million to $44 million within a two-year span; now, $10 million to $17 million, albeit with one more team this time around.

Nevertheless, boats are bound to crash.

In fact, here’s footage of Team Vestas Wind right at the moment’s notice of the crash and its immediate aftermath:

This Danish sailing team smashed its $6 million yacht going 22 MPH onto a reef in the Indian Ocean a few months ago. While the nine crew members made it out safe, the boat’s rudders were instantly deteriorated and stern damaged. Less noticeable aspects, like its carbon fiber structure, have been likely corroded. Warming up the hull and utilizing thermal imaging would demonstrate the severity of the collision, where spaces of air or water in the boat show decay. At this moment, though, the Vestas ship is rested at Persico Marine in Italy, the original home of where the hulls were crafted. A lot of work needs to happen between now and June before it’s deemed ready to partake in the last legs of the race.

Navigation, naturally, comprises of science and technology as one, which has drastically shifted the way in which these sailors operate.

“Navigators now use routing software to calculate all sorts of different routing options and speeds based weather systems, currents, wind angles, etc. The various models will provided expected outcomes to the navigators and teams; and they need to make decisions off that,” explains Alberts.

“So, in a sense, it’s a science mixed in with intuition and knowledge,” Alberts added.

Currently, weather data packets and information that the teams receive each day are sent to them by Race Control, deriving from several weather companies, experts, and services. This level of intel yields the best available in the world, where military, commercial, and government agencies, too, respectively benefit from–making this Volvo Ocean Race particularly apt with the science behind navigation.

On top of the nautical requirements, it’s only been until recently that media equipment has been introduced.

Back in the late 1990s, that marked the first time when the public was able to track online the course of the race. A breakthrough for coverage of its time at the dawn of the Internet era. Alberts mentions that sailors weren’t not fond of capturing their own footage while racing; 2008-09 led a one member of each team to be trained for media duties. Inmarsat satellite technology enabled the crews to submit audio, video, and photos back to the Spanish headquarters. A new rule mandates that there’s an onboard reporter at all times, with the gamut of gadgets: multiple cameras across the boat, GoPros for handheld necessities, microphone inputs for best sound, a switcher down below at the media station, and a computer capable of full-editing.

“Really, what we’ve done is turn the latest boat into a floating production truck,” proclaims Alberts.

On the horizon, it’s still prohibitively expense to provide a full-time livestream from each boat–although it can viewed via their app, website, and mobile apps–while being out 3,000 miles at sea. In spite of this kind of technology being presently available, improvements can be executed to allow for a permanent livestream from each boat–without a huge financial burden for it. There’s a ton of action that should be consumed by fans over such an extensive period of time.

The Volvo Ocean Race, in theory, is casted off as a marathon, but it functions more like a long sprint, outfitted like NASCAR. A nine-month pursuit that’s equipped with the latest technological advancements to complete this global odyssey.