Yachting: Addicted to testing the limits

Grant Dalton knows the thrill of ocean racing as well as anyone, writes JULIE ASH.

Grant Dalton has already conquered the Mt Everest of ocean racing, but early on Monday he will once again set sail in undoubtedly the toughest yacht race of them all.

The first leg of the Volvo Ocean Race, formerly the Whitbread round-the-world event, starts in Southampton.

Eight yachts will race more than 33,000 nautical miles in nine months, finishing in Kiel, Germany, around June 9.

Dalton is in charge of the Nautor Challenge syndicate, based in Finland and Italy, which has two yachts - Amer Sports One and Amer Sports Too.

Dalton will skipper Sports One and the all-female Sports Too will be led by American Lisa McDonald, who is back for her second round-the-world race after competing on EF Education in the 1997-98 Whitbread.

"My goal is to win the race," Dalton said. "But I also want Lisa McDonald and the women's crew to do well. The team wins if both boats do well."

The Nautor syndicate built two yachts, one from the drawing board of Milan-based Mani Frers and the other from United States-based Kiwi Bruce Farr, who has designed six of the eight boats in the race.

Fellow Kiwi and America's Cup designer Laurie Davidson designed the boat for the Norwegian team, the djuice Dragons.

Dalton opted for the Frers boat.

"There was nothing in it. I would be happy to sail either boat around the world."

He said the Frers boat was slightly wider, producing more power but carrying more boat in the water.

"The boats perform differently in different conditions. In some years the Frers would have won and in others it would have been the Farr."

A new points system has been introduced where equal points will be awarded for each leg as opposed to more points for the longer legs, which was used in the last race.

"No matter if it is a long leg or a short leg, you will get eight points for first place and seven for second, and so on," Dalton said. "This way the race is more interesting for the public and it also means that the race may not be decided until the fleet get to Kiel.

"The race is nine legs long. If you lose the first three games in a rugby season it doesn't mean you are not going to be in the final, but we want to make a solid start - you can't let someone get too far ahead."

There has also been a slight change in the course. The fleet still heads to Cape Town on the first leg but now bypasses Fremantle and stops at Sydney before joining the Sydney-to-Hobart race.

"The Southern Ocean is always the coldest with the biggest waves," Dalton said. "It's always hard to sail through there. But it's the cold weather which really gets you."

He said the German team illbruck, headed by Californian America's Cup and Olympic silver medallist John Kostecki, will be one to watch, along with Bermuda's Tyco, who have Dalton's old sailing partner Kevin Shoebridge as skipper.

"The illbruck team have been preparing for the past three years whereas our programme was very late coming together. We are very lucky to be here.

"The fleet is small on numbers but enormously high on quality. Never before has there been an entire fleet of this quality."

The number of entries this year are down on previous years.

Several America's Cup syndicates expressed an interest, but with the ocean race finishing in June and the challenger series starting in Auckland four months later, the dates were too close.

"There are going to be a lot of disappointed people in the end. Everyone has spent a lot of time and money to be here, but there can only be one winner," Dalton said.

The 2001-02 Ocean Race is Dalton's sixth crack at the event, although he has raced around the world a seventh time, winning the super catamaran Club Med race this year.

"Once the fleet is at sea it's boat against boat, men and women against the elements, and the need for team work, co-operation and courage, which can mean the difference between winning and losing, is essential."

Dalton skippered Endeavour to success in the 1993-1994 race and finished second in Merit Cup in the last event.

"After the last race I knew I wanted to do it once more.

"I wasn't particularly happy with our second place overall. I knew I could do better. I guess the competitive spark is still going strong."

The idea for the round-the-world race came in 1971 when a few sailors had gathered to down a few pints. The conversation turned to tales of passages made, races won and sailors lost, before the idea of staging the ultimate race around the world - a trip of nearly 27,000 miles - was raised.

It would be a race that pushed the endurance of crews and boats to the limit as they navigated their way through freezing oceans filled with icebergs and gales that blew for weeks on end.

On September 8, 1973, the first Whitbread race involving 17 boats set sail from Portsmouth.

On Monday, at least 28 New Zealanders will be aboard the eight yachts departing Southampton in the four-yearly event keen to emulate the success of Dalton and Sir Peter Blake, who won with Steinlager II in the 1989-90 race.

"Twenty years ago I set out on my first round-the-world yacht race, which was an adventure," Dalton said. "This time it is the same set but a slightly different scene. There are butterflies in the stomachs of all of our crew and I am sure in all the others as well."

THE ENTRY LIST

Assa Abloy

Home: Stockholm, Sweden. Designer: Farr Yacht Design. Skipper: Roy Heiner.

Amer Sports One

Home: Nylandska Jaktklubben (Finland), Yacht Club Costa Smerelda (Italy). Designer: German Frers. Skipper: Grant Dalton.

Amer Sports Too

Home: Nylandska Jaktklubben, Yacht Club Costa Smerelda. Designer: Farr Yacht Design. Skipper: Lisa McDonald (US).

djuice dragons

Home: Oslo, Norway. Designer: Laurie Davidson (New Zealand). Skipper: Knut Frostad.

illbruck

Home: Leverkusen, Germany. Designer: Farr Yacht Design. Skipper: John Kostecki.

Team News Corp

Home: Auckland, New Zealand. Designer: Farr Yacht Design. Skipper: Jez Fanstone.

SEB

Home: Stockholm. Designer: Farr Yacht Design. Skipper: Gunnar "Gurra" Krantz.

Tyco

Home: Bermuda. Designer: Farr Yacht Design. Skipper: Kevin Shoebridge (New Zealand).