The Volvo Ocean Race Comes To Newport

The Volvo Ocean Race fleet stopped off in Newport, R.I. and FORBES got to ride on two of these 65-foot, carbon-fiber sailing yachts as they engaged in a series of short, inshore races before setting off across the Atlantic for the final leg of the round-the-world race. First up was Azzam, the Abu Dhabi Ocean Racing boat, which is currently leading the race with two first-place finishes in the offshore legs and three seconds. Then I hopped on Team SCA , an all-woman team sponsored by Swedish paper-products giant SCA that is turning in a respectable performance given the limited pro-racing experience and strength disadvantage women face on these largely human-powered racing machines.

The Newport races were dubbed "pro-am" because of the mix of professionals and guests on board. The course was a simple set of reaches, broadside to the wind, that resembled a drag race as there was little opportunity for boats to pass each other after the start. Still, it was a great opportunity to sample the sheer power of these boats, which can sail faster than the wind in breezes below around 20 knots and top out well over 30 knots. Skipper Ian Walker generously let me sail almost an entire leg of one race and I was hitting 13.5 knots in a 13-knot wind.

The Volvo Ocean Race is co-owned by Volvo Group Global and Volvo Cars. Volvo Group is based in Sweden and makes trucks and heavy equipment, while Volvo Cars, the passenger-car company, was sold off to Ford in 1999 and now belongs to China's Geely Holdings. They both get a lot of promotional mileage out of the Volvo Ocean Race, Volvo Group mostly as a way to entertain employees, distributors and customers, and Volvo Cars as an image booster for cars aimed mostly at upper-middle-income professionals.

Team SCA is sponsored by SCA, another Swedish firm that doesn't have a lot of brand recognition in the U.S. but sells about half the napkins used in American restaurants and has a commanding share of the feminine-products market in other countries. SCA's decision to sponsor an all-woman team was risky from the standpoint of winning recognition on the winner's podium but brilliant public relations. The women have demonstrated mastery of ocean navigation and boathandling and avoided, so far, miscues like Team Vestas Wind's grounding on an atoll in the Indian Ocean. "It's been great having the female sailors visit all the countries we do business in," said Don Lewis, president of SCA Americas, who was in Newport Friday visiting the two-story, prefab race headquarters that travels around the world with the team. Outside spectators watched demonstrations of self-parking Volvo Cars while further out on the peninsula at Newport's Fort Adams State Park they could sip drinks at the Mount Gay Rum tent. Sailing struggles to get the kind of audiences in the U.S. that it draws in Europe, Australia and New Zealand but 125,000 people visited Fort Adams during the 12-day Volvo layover in the race's first stop ever at Newport. The racing itself was a brief hiatus from the high-pressure competition the teams have endured since shoving off from Alicante, Spain on Oct. 11. Since then they've stopped in Cape Town; Abu Dhabi; Sanya, China; Auckland, N.Z.; and Itajai, Brazil. After an aggravating sail through the Sargasso Sea, where 20-foot streamers of kelp attached to the keel and foils and slowed the boats down, the fleet hit Newport on May 5 with China's Dongfeng Race Team 3 minutes and 25 seconds ahead of Abu Dhabi. Volvo ocean racers are one-design 65-footers with canting keels that hold a lead bulb out at an angle from the bottom to keep the boat upright. For inshore racing the engines are roaring throughout to power the hydraulics that swing the keel from side to side, while batteries power the hydraulics offshore. The boats handle like sports cars, accelerating to the speed of the wind in seconds and throwing off motorboat-style wakes in even a light breeze of 10-13 knots. The fun in this kind of racing is the start, where skippers like Abu Dhabi's Walker, an Olympic silver medalist in the 470 and the larger Star keelboat, maneuver their 65-foot boats like they were planing-hull dinghies. Hanging high above the line to keep Team Brunel at bay, Walker waited until 30 seconds before the start before he swung the bow aggressively down to fill the sails with wind and accelerate toward the line. Then we were off, sailing four high-speed reaching legs around the buoys with a boat load of tired professional sailors and a collection of amateur guests sampling a rather tame version of the Volvo Ocean Race. The pros where happy to put the guests on the coffee grinder winches for a change and the guests were thrilled to be able to ride on these amped-up racers that had just come three-quarters of the way around the globe.