Yachting: Taking on the Everest of sailing with four hours' sleep

The official route of the Volvo Ocean Race 2011-12. Photo / VOR

The Volvo Ocean Race has a long and rich association with New Zealand sailing.

Kiwi legends such as Grant Dalton and the late Sir Peter Blake are synonymous with the great ocean adventure, which landlubbers may remember as the Whitbread Round the World yacht race.

But it has been 12 years since there has been a New Zealand-flagged entry in the iconic race.

That long absence ends tomorrow when Emirates Team New Zealand along with five other teams - Puma, Groupama, Team Telefonica, Abu Dhabi, and Team Sanya - sets off from Alicante, Spain on the first leg of the round the world adventure.

The image of round the world sailing often conjures up romantic images of standing on the bow, winds filling the sails and the boat smoothly cutting through the deep blue, while dolphins frolic in the wake.

But the Volvo Ocean Race is no idyllic cruise - it is described as the "Everest of sailing" for a reason.

"It is a real extreme endurance event," said David Slyfield, who, as Team New Zealand's trainer, is the man charged with preparing the team for the physical demands of sailing 39,000 nautical miles around the world.

During the nine months of the Volvo Ocean Race, the teams will sail the world's most treacherous seas via Cape Town, Abu Dhabi, Sanya, Auckland, around Cape Horn to Itajai, Miami, Lisbon, and Lorient.

The crews will experience life at the extreme, with temperature variations from -5C to 40C as they venture deep into the bleak latitudes of the Southern Ocean and around the world's most dangerous capes.

For non-seafaring folk, the conditions the sailors are operating under are beyond the realms of imagination. So to help put you in the sturdy rubber soled shoes of the sailors, picture this:

You're battling your way through heavy seas, being continually drenched as waves wash over the deck. With a rolling roster of four hours on, four hours off, eventually you are relieved of your duties by the next shift. So below decks you go, get out of your wet weather gear and into some dry clothes, try to throw down some freeze-dried food, which after weeks at sea becomes extremely unappetising, get in your bunk and attempt to sleep while the boat is being thrown around. But then the watch captain above deck decides they need to tack, so you've got to get up, get your wet weather gear on again, brave the elements to move all the equipment from one side of the deck to the other and then head back downstairs to try to get back to sleep.

Slyfield said simply trying to prepare the team for the continuous physical and mental stress they will face at sea is one of the biggest challenges he has faced in his career.

"Once the race starts, their physical wellbeing goes downhill, with the sleep deprivation, the sea-sickness and the hammering their bodies take - they have to be in pretty good shape to cope with that amount of physical stress," he said.

"There are people dead on their feet and they have to keep functioning and being able to deliver in that state."

It is little wonder then that in the space of a leg, team nutritionist and chef Jess Lynskey estimates the sailors can lose anywhere from 4kg to 9kg - most of that being muscle wastage.

Lynskey, who is responsible for the huge logistical task of calculating the team's nutritional needs for any given leg, said the sailors' energy requirements were more than double what an average person would eat.

"We pack them about 5000 calories a day or around 22,000 kilojoules. A normal person would have 9000kj a day, a person who is on a high-energy diet has about 12,000kj," said Lynskey.

Yet it remains an addictive challenge.

Team New Zealand skipper Chris Nicholson is embarking on his fourth Volvo campaign, while his watch captain aboard the Camper, Stu Bannatyne, is a veteran of five campaigns.

Nicholson, who was a high performance dinghy sailor in a previous life, said what keeps drawing him back to the gruelling round the world adventure is knowing just how exceptionally difficult it is to win.

He said it required meticulous planning, superior boat design, a talented crew working seamlessly together, top-notch weather analysis and even an element of luck to claim the biggest prize in ocean racing.

"As soon as I was immersed in the programme and understood what was involved in the challenge to win, it's really quite an addictive part of the sport," he said.

No one knows more about the lure of the race than Team New Zealand boss Grant Dalton. A veteran of six round the world campaigns, Dalton has been the driving force behind the return of a New Zealand-flagged boat to the race.

With his ocean-racing days behind him, Dalton reckons he'll find it even tougher being on shore than out at sea during the race. But he said he has the utmost confidence that Nicholson, Bannatyne and the crew have the knowledge and expertise to lead a successful campaign.

"I think they've done a better job than I could have hoped to have done," said Dalton.

"They're better than we ever were, I don't want to think they are, but they are."