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Volvo Open 70 movistar heads into Melbourne to come third on Leg 2 of the race from Cape Town.
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The Volvo Ocean Race Returns to the Chesapeake Bay
and it's the locals who make it happen-Annapolis style
by Elvia Thompson-Staller
They're baaack . . . the Grand Prix of the sailing circuit is making its only official stopover in the United States here on the Chesapeake Bay, verifying Annapolis's status as the Sailing Capital of the World. And how did Baltimore-Annapolis beat out Miami, Fort Lauderdale, New York, Newport, and a host of other cities that would have liked this ocean racing feather in their caps? There are a lot of reasons we were selected, but one of the most important is the people. After a Whitbread Ocean Race in 1998, a Volvo Ocean Race (same race, new name) in 2002, and countless boat shows and other major events, the recurring theme is "We know how to do this."
The Local Organizers
Sometimes it seems as if everybody in town is involved in preparations for the Volvo Ocean Race stopover, the Maryland Maritime Heritage Festival, and the launch of the National Sailing Hall of Fame. The Conference and Visitors Bureau is selling Annapolis as a destination for sailing enthusiasts, and the county's Office of Economic Development is working to involve and attract businesses from as far away as the BWI area. Every department in the City of Annapolis, from police and firefighters to public works, is ready for the influx of visitors. Local marine trade companies, charters, retail businesses, hotels, and restaurants are ready for a busy week.
"Our people are our greatest resource," says Annapolis Mayor Ellen O. Moyer. "Where else in the world would you have 5000 people at a party in the rain?" she asks, referring to the first Annapolis Salute party given by the Eastport Yacht Club (EYC) and Severn Sailing Association for the 1998 Whitbread race sailors. It poured that night and the 5000 revelers were a sea of yellow and red foulies, in high spirits.
While Annapolis may be in the international spotlight, to Tim Dowling of Annapolis Boat Shows, Inc., it's another day on the job-sort of. He's in charge of building the 170-foot lagoon-style floating dock that will accommodate the Volvo 70s, the Pride of Baltimore II, the schooner Virginia, the Sequoia, and spectators.
Dowling is working closely with Ric Dahlgren, Annapolis's harbormaster, who comments that on the spectator portion of the floating dock (the viewing dock), spectators will find themselves between the old and the new.
"I have to build 300 plus docks for the boat shows," Dowling says. "I only need the equivalent of 42 for this."
Celebrants in Annapolis greeting the 2002 Volvo Ocean Race
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The Volvo 70s arrive in Annapolis on May 4, just a day or so after the docks are in place. Dahlgren is in charge of securing the Maritime Heritage Festival and the Volvo 70s while ensuring that the public has a good view of them.
A big part of work leading to this was completed in December when a 50-foot-wide channel 17 feet deep was dredged in the harbor to accommodate the nearly 15-foot draft of the Volvo 70s. "My big concern is safety," he emphasizes. "The channel will be well marked for them coming in and going out for the restart. I sure don't want to be the harbormaster under whose watch one of these boats hits bottom," he laughs.
After the arrival and attending hoopla, the harbormaster staff and volunteers work around the clock in shifts to ensure safety and to take care of any needs the crews may have. Dahlgren had some 50 volunteers helping last time, some from as far away as Charlottesville. "Everyone wants to be part of this. And I try to make it so that the volunteers can have some fun too-escorting VIPs to the boats, talking to the crews . . . that sort of thing," he says.
Frank Biba of the city's Department of Neighborhood and Environmental Programs-the "quality of life" department-is coordinating logistics for the maritime festival. He is one of many city employees who will be doing double duty and more to make sure all goes smoothly.
"I'm making sure that the police, fire, public works, and other departments are all on the same page," he says, adding that he's not concerned and that everything will hum along just fine. But a big event like this "brings in a whole lot of other players," he adds. "The difference is in its boundaries. A lot of people come here not just to see the boats . . . they want to be part of the event."
So Biba and other city employees will be making sure that everyone knows where the boundaries are and who's in charge of what. The festival organizers are responsible for safety and security inside the festival perimeter and the police outside of it. The city also needs to be sure a fire lane is kept open and that trash trucks can get in and out. The devil is in the details, but Biba has no worries. "We know how to do this."
One of the few newcomers to the events is Annapolis resident Brendan Curley, a 35-year-old sales executive with Kemper Sports. He will run the Maryland Maritime Heritage Festival. "I'm really looking forward to it," he says of his first foray into the Volvo world.
While a few people working to make the festival a success are receiving stipends, the bulk of the work will be done by volunteers. One of the most daunting prospects is amassing 300 or so volunteers for various tasks.
Since November, Cardie Templeton, president of W & P Nautical Property, has been organizing volunteers to work with the harbormaster, help festival exhibitors, erect tents, and help the sailing syndicates. "I'm recruiting as many people as possible and then I'll manage them on site during the event," she says cheerfully. "I'm hoping to have 500 eager volunteers by April first, to give me some 300-400 that I can assign 3- to 4-hour windows of work. I'll probably end up with 250 volunteers to fill 300 shifts."
For last year's fest, Templeton had ninety shifts to fill. "There's no way this would come together without all the volunteer help," she says. Volunteers are also going to be asking local businesses to donate furniture, carpet remnants, chairs-you name it-for the festival.
Inside Templeton's cheerful demeanor is a realization of how much work there is to do. "I will be flat on the floor on the evening of the seventh but I will have had fun," she smiles.
Volunteers will be rewarded with a big thank you party when all the events are over.
Another woman who is drawing heavily from committed volunteers is Clare Vanderbeek, the head of what is billed as the Biggest Sailors Party in the world. EYC and its neighbor, the Severn Sailing Association, will welcome 5000 people to their combined grounds for great food, grog, and music, just to make the Volvo crews feel welcome and to have a grand old time, Eastport style. She and her volunteer coordinators are lining up hundreds of their organizations' members to make this happen. Vanderbeek also headed up the previous two salute parties, about which Volvo crews raved.
The Black Pearl comes round the headland into Wellington Harbour to finish third on Leg 3 from Melbourne.
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On the Water
In addition to all the landside activities, there is the restart on May 7, which takes place on the water. In the past, professional race director Peter Craig from Marblehead, Massachusetts, has relied on the assistance of locals to provide race committee-knowledgeable volunteers. Carrying this responsibility is Annapolis Yacht Club Race Committee Chairman Chip Thayer.
"He relies on us locals as he does in all the locations where he runs races," Thayer says about Craig. "Running races is his business." But Craig does need the local help. It would be impossible to maintain an exclusion zone for the Volvo 70s to race in without a lot of local boats skippered by knowledgeable people.
That means relying on steadfast volunteers like Tom Stalder and Bill "Sparky" Cusack of EYC. They spent 27 hours in a 19-foot inflatable boatlast time, ferrying race inspectors onto and off of the racing boats as they approached the finish line. Because of nearly no-wind conditions, Stalder says, it was one of the longest nights he's ever spent.
"We got up close and personal with all the boats," he says. "We'd take the inspectors out there, they'd take about 10 minutes to make sure everything was the same at the finish as it was at the start, and then we'd take them home again and wait for the next one." Stalder and Cusack will be doing the same job again this time.
"We'll only need about 15 race committee people for that. I know we'll have all the help we need with the exclusion zone," Thayer says. "We've done this before, and we've had powerboats, Navy 44s, and the J-105 fleet working. It's a good cooperative effort." "We know how to do this."
The Whole Shebang
Baltimore native Greg Barnhill is the person in charge of the entire Chesapeake stopover. If his name sounds familiar, it's because he was responsible for getting rid of the sailboat Houdini that Hurricane Isabel wrecked on the Naval Academy seawall some years ago. A partner in Brown Advisory, he has been the president of Ocean Race Chesapeake since the beginning. He exudes optimism and excitement about the Chesapeake stopover.
"So, we're doing it again," he smiles. "It's going to be fun, with great events, and it will be good for the region, and the kids will learn something."
Barnhill says the reason the race is returning to the area for the third time is "our stopover was the best in the history of the race. It's a combination of the sailors of the Chesapeake, the support and buy in of the corporate community and foundations.
The economic impact last time was over $50 million and this time we have in-port racing that will draw people and the stopover is longer," he explains. "We can be much more up close and personal to the constituency than ever before because the technology is so much more advanced now. We know what's going on with the boats so much quicker than before."
But what makes it a success? Again, it's "We know how to do this."
"The learning curve is so much flatter than the hockey stick we had before," Barnhill says. "We have a working board. We do everything pretty much internally-marketing, fund raising-so our budgets are tight and in the black. Nobody really takes authorship-everybody is part of the whole and it's worth more than the sum of its parts. When someone takes authorship and doesn't deflect credit, you have a problem."
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When all the celebration is over and the crews are heading down the Bay and landside visitors are headed home, Annapolis will add one more chapter to its saga as America's Sailing Capital, because of a can-do attitude based on enthusiasm for sailing and the Chesapeake Bay . . . and on a citywide commitment to putting our best foot forward. Oh, yeah, "We know how to do this."
Elvia Thompson Staller is a freelance writer who lives in Annapolis. Her last story published by What's Up? Annapolis focused on junior sailing programs in our community.
It began in 1973, according to the race Web site, "in the smoke-filled bar of a yachtsman's pub-and became the greatest ocean race ever." The initial idea was probably sketched out on the back of a cocktail napkin.
The first race had 17 entries. It was organized by the Royal Naval Sailing Association with sponsorship from the London-based brewery company Whitbread and was the first-ever attempt at a global, crewed yacht race. The race was known as the Whitbread until the Volvo company took it over in 2002. The first four races had just four stopovers. The first stopover in the United States was during the 1990 race, when Ft. Lauderdale got the honor, as it did in 1994.
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The Volvo Ocean Race is a grueling 31,250-nautical-mile marathon that began in Vigo, Spain, in November 2005 and will finish in Gothenburg, Sweden, in June 2006. It consists of nine legs:
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In 1998, a determined group of sailing enthusiasts from Baltimore and Annapolis, led by local sailing icon and broadcaster Gary Jobson, succeed in bringing the last Whitbread into the Chesapeake-after a stop in Ft. Lauderdale. That there was a local entry, Chessie Racing, led by local sailor George Collins, didn't hurt either. In 2000 the race went to Miami rather than Ft. Lauderdale, and the boats returned to the Chesapeake even though there was no local entry-no American entry, for that matter.
The nonprofit corporation Ocean Race Chesapeake was organized in 1989 as a private- and public-sector partnership to make arrangements for ocean racing on the Chesapeake Bay. It has managed a number of large and prestigious races of international renown, including all three Ocean Race stopovers in this area.
The Baltimore-Annapolis stopover is the only official stop in the United States. The pit stop in New York that follows the Chesapeake stopover is to make a clean start for an attempt to break the speed record between Ambrose Light in New York and the Lizard in Cornwall, England. Compared to other stopover cities like Sydney and Rio, this venue is small. But organizers have said consistently that the sailing spirit and organizational enthusiasm in this area are what keep them coming back. "We know how to do this."
The winner won't necessarily be the first boat over the finish line in Gothenburg. The winner will be the boat with the most points accrued. The boats earn points via in-port racing, passing the scoring gates along the course, and finishing each leg. This is the first time in-port racing has been added. It not only gives the teams more opportunities to score points, it also brings the excitement of seeing the big boats in action to more people.
Originally the finish of the Chesapeake leg was to be at Fort McHenry in the Patapsco River, but last time the boats were infuriatingly becalmed all the way up the Bay and especially in the river. So organizers decided to finish them at Baltimore Light, just off Gibson Island. The first of the boats is expected on April 15-but they will be coming from Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, so arrival time estimates could be off by as much as 3 days. It all depends on wind and weather conditions.
You can follow developments, learn about the boats and crews, and view crew e-ail and movies on the official race site: www.volvooceanrace.org. National Geographic also has an interactive site through which you can follow the race. See www.nationalgeographic.com/volvooceanrace.
The Black Pearl, sponsored by Disney, is the only U.S. entry this time. The skipper is American Paul Cayard, an experienced Volvo Ocean Race sailor-he won the race in 1998 and holds many other sailing distinctions. There is only one other American on the boat, Jerry Kirby, who calls himself "the world's oldest bowman." The rest are from Australia (three), New Zealand (four), Netherlands, Great Britain, and Canada. There are no Annapolitans sailing in the Volvo Ocean Race this time around. The Black Pearl's pirate-themed Web site, is well worth a visit at www.blackpearlracing.com.
Even the design of the boats has Annapolis origins. Of the seven boats in the race, four were designed by Farr Yacht Design in Annapolis: movistar, Ericsson, Brasil 1, and Pirates of the Caribbean. Farr, like the other designers in the race, had to adhere to a stringent set of new design rules.
After the 2001-2002 race, officials decided that although the Volvo Ocean 60s "had proven themselves to be among the fastest ocean going monohulls," it was time to incorporate new boat design developments and materials to create "an even more extreme class of yacht to bring the true demands of the race to the public eye."
Communication technology had improved as well, allowing almost continuous communication with all the yachts en route anywhere on the planet. There are more than seven cameras aboard all the boats and e-mail capability is almostcontinually available.
The goal of the race organizers, then, was to bring "sheer speed potential, the flying whitewater, the hardships of the sailing" to an armchair audience and "grab the imaginations of those who had never even stepped on board a yacht."
So the Volvo Open 70s are longer and have a taller mast, all the while weighing in at approximately 2600 pounds less than the previous design. The boats' stability comes from the high-tech 15,000-pound canting keel, which uses hydraulics to shift from one side to the other.
There has been a lot of controversy during this race and there have been dangerous moments. Almost all the boats have suffered structural problems. Some commentators have said they are over the line- too light for open ocean conditions and great distances. Others have said that the canting keel is a bad idea-too many moving parts that can go bad. No doubt these and other issues will be argued over and over at the conclusion of the race.
One thing is for sure: the technology developed for this race will find its way into recreational and smaller racing vessels. Like the space race, the ocean race produces spinoffs and lessons learned that will affect every sailor sooner or later.