Yachting: Revamped round-the-world race struggling for entrants

The round-the-world race has become something of an institution for Kiwi sailors, but less than a year out from the 2005/06 event, there are just six entries confirmed.

Established in 1973 the event, now known as the Volvo Ocean Race, is an eight-month journey which takes competitors across 31,000 nautical miles of the globe's most treacherous seas.

Of the 1875 people who have sailed in at least one leg of the race, 164 are New Zealanders. Only Britain (457) and France (291) have supplied more participants.

But whether a new generation of sailors will get the chance to join the likes of Sir Peter Blake, Grant Dalton and Kevin Shoebridge and conquer the world's oceans could depend on the success of the next race which starts in November off the coast of Galicia, Spain.

So far there are just six yachts entered, and one of those is a development team.

Veteran New Zealand sailor Mike Sanderson is the skipper of one of the Netherlands teams, ABN Amro 1.

The syndicate, which has a budget of $37 million, has a second team, ABN Amro 2, which comprises of sailors under the age of 30.

Sanderson, who was with Oracle in the last America's Cup, sailed on Dalton's New Zealand Endeavour, winner of the maxi division in 1993-94, and on Merit Cup, which was second in the 1997-98 event.

Joining him on ABN Amro 1 are New Zealanders Brad Jackson, Tony Mutter and David Endean.

Former Prada tactician Torben Grael is the skipper of Brasil 1 and Australian Grant Wharington, who is known for his exploits on his super-maxi Skandia, heads Premier Challenge.

Sweden's Atlant Ocean Racing and Spain's Telfonica Movistar, led by nine-times world champion and America's Cup skipper Pedro Campos, round out the entries so far.

"We have six boats under construction which is great news and we are working hard with the teams on the announcement of a few more before March, which is about the last realistic date new boats can start construction," race chief executive Glenn Bourke said.

In an effort to spice it up the event was revamped after the 2001-2002 race, which had eight competitors.

With gigantic catamarans and trimarans now crashing around the world in next to no time, a new design was needed to replace the 18m boats.

Larger 21m yachts were introduced in September last year and some experts have predicted they could be up to 21 days faster than the previous boats.

In other changes to the race, the yachts will visit 10 ports and the event will incorporate seven inshore races.

"Personally I have no doubt the 2005/06 Volvo Ocean Race will be a superb event as we have some innovative additions this time round such as in-port racing and a new scoring system, which will make it difficult for one boat to become a runaway leader early on," said Bourke.

"I'm particularly interested to see how the teams tackle the various skills required for the different types of racing and how the designers develop the boats so that they're adaptable for both ocean racing and in-port racing."