Volvo Ocean Race

The Volvo Ocean Race (formerly the Whitbread Round the World Race) is a yacht race around the world, held every three years. It is named after its current owner, Volvo. At this moment the Netherlands holds the record of three wins with the Dutch skipper Conny van Rietschoten being the only skipper to win the race twice.

Though the route is changed to accommodate various ports of call, the race typically departs Europe in October, and in recent editions has had either 9 or 10 legs, with in-port races at many of the stopover cities. The 2008-2009 edition of the race started in Alicante, Spain, on October 11, 2008. The route for the 2008-2009 race was altered from previous years to include stopovers in India and Asia for the first time. The 2008-09 route covered nearly 39,000 nmi (72,000 km), took over nine months to complete, and reached a cumulative TV audience of 2 billion people worldwide.

During the nine months of the 2011–12 Volvo Ocean Race, which started in Alicante, Spain in October 2011 and concluded in Galway, Ireland, in July 2012, the teams were scheduled to sail over 39,000 nmi (72,000 km) of the world’s most treacherous seas via Cape Town, Abu Dhabi, Sanya, Auckland, around Cape Horn to Itajaí, Miami, Lisbon, and Lorient.

Each of the entries has a sailing team of 11 professional crew who race day and night for more than 20 days at a time on some of the legs. They will each take on different jobs on board the boat, and on top of these sailing roles, there will be two sailors that have had medical training, as well as a sailmaker, an engineer and a dedicated media crew member.

No fresh food is typically taken on board, so they live off freeze-dried fare; they will experience temperature variations from -5 to +40 degrees Celsius and will only take one change of clothes.