With less than 600 miles to go, Ericsson 4 will likely be first at the finishing line in Cape Town, South-Africa. We’ll have a more detailed review of the first leg next week, when all ships are in.
In the meantime, we’ve selected this picture to be our “52Sails picture of the week”. Freddie Shanks has to do some tough grinding onboard of Green Dragon. Image (c) Guo Chuan/Green Dragon Racing/Volvo Ocean Race.
The Volvo Ocean Race is taking part in a pioneering project aimed at finding out how the oceans have been affected by ships’ exchanging of billions of tonnes of ballast water.
Each boat in the race will be involved in the programme which was initiated by the Wallenius Wilhelmsen Logistics (WWL), the logistics partner of the 2008-2009 Volvo Ocean Race. The dedicated “media crew” member on board will be responsible for taking regular water samples using a sophisticated testing process based on bioluminescence using a measuring instrument called a luminometer.
The race route provides scientists with a rare opportunity to analyse the biomass of the water in open seas not on the regular shipping lanes. It will advance scientific research as to how foreign invaders found in ballast water are upsetting the eco-systems in the world’s great oceans.
“Invasive species are one of the four major threats to the world’s oceans, the other three being global climate change, marine pollution and overfishing,” said WWL’s Global Head of Environment, Melanie Moore, during a recent briefing to a Media Crew Member workshop in Race HQ in Whiteley, Hampshire.
“What we want to look at is the mass of species along the race route. That’s the benefit of what the crew can do for us. It’s about conducting research that will go towards creating some better ballast water treatment systems for the future,” she added.
The research at sea by the Media Crew Member involves taking a regular water sample, recording the mass of species in the sample, reporting the results electronically and then having them published on the Volvo Ocean Race website. A scientific report of the findings will be published post-race.
To put this research in perspective, the IMO has issued a dire warning about the threat of invasive marine species carried across the world in ballast water.
“Unlike other marine pollution, from which the environment will eventually recover, the impacts of invasive marine species are most often irreversible.”
How does one transport a 60ft yacht (a VOR Open60 to be precise) from Auckland, New Zealand to Alicante, Spain? You take a plane, open the nose, shove it in, fly it to Alicante (with refueling stops in Indonesia and Azerbaijan), open the nose again and unload it. Sounds easy, no?
I am always amazed when I see those big Antonov’s in action. They seem to be the only remaining part of the old USSR aviation technology. (Image: Maria Muina/Equipo Telefonica)
The 2008-09 Volvo Ocean Race will be the 10th running of this ocean marathon. Starting from Alicante in Spain on 4 October 2008, it will for the first time, take in ports in Asia. Spanning some 39,000 nautical miles, stopping at around 11 ports and taking nine months to complete, the Volvo Ocean Race is the world’s premier yacht race for professional racing crews.
With lots of teams already far in the preparations, including a Russian Team, this edition of the VOR promises to be a very competitive and exciting one! We’ll regularly post important news or nice photo’s about the boats as soon as we receive them. (Image: (c) Volvo Ocean Race)
PUMA Ocean Racing’s new boat for the Volvo Ocean Race 2008-2009 prepares to move out of the Goetz Custom Boats facility Tuesday morning in Bristol, Rhode Island on its way toward Newport Shipyard. What normally takes 25 minutes for passenger cars took more than 2 hours as the wide load and 70-foot boat had to navigate over a closed 2-lane bridge, around streets signs, through narrow turns and over curbs. A dense layer of fog on the historic Mt. Hope Bridge, made for an especially tricky but photo-worthy drive. At 6:25 with the sun slowly rising, PUMA’s new boat arrived at the Newport Shipyard.
Photo by Sally Collison/PUMA Ocean Racing.