Volvo boats leave for Sharjah on armed ship

Volvo Ocean Race organisers put the future of the event on the line on Wednesday, sending the five boats off on an armed transport ship to traverse waters made too dangerous to sail by pirate activity. The five competitors were loaded onto the ship -- itself a precarious operation -- on Tuesday and began the six-day trip from an undisclosed Indian Ocean location at around 1400GMT on Wednesday. They should be able to restart the race next week from Sharjah, and complete a leg that started on December 11 in Cape Town with a day-long sprint into Abu Dhabi. "Taking this decision was incredibly difficult but we had to make the safety of the teams our top priority," said race CEO Knut Frostad. "I'm relieved to be able to say that all the boats have now been safely loaded and that the ship has left port." The measures taken by the race are unprecedented in the sport, and a reflection of just how risky the piracy situation has become. The five 15-tonne yachts with their 31-metre masts in place took an entire day to load. A total of three more loading/unloading operations will have to be carried out when they arrive in Sharjah and when the programme is reversed for Leg 3 from Abu Dhabi to Sanya in China. "Boats are built to go in the water, not the air, so this operation scared me," said Iker Martinez, the Spanish skipper of overall race leader Telefonica. "A lot can go wrong very quickly when you're hauling these super-fragile boats around." The ship will not only have armed guards on board but will have armour protection. Sitting much higher in the water than a racing yacht it should be less vulnerable than six individual Volvo boats in the same zone. The value of the yachts is estimated at up to $100 million but for race organisers the stakes are far higher. If the boats were to be taken by pirates, a race with a turnover of hundreds of millions of euros, visiting 10 cities around the world over eight months and featuring the elite of offshore sailing could not continue at all. Telefónica clinched a nail-biting victory in the first stage of Leg 2, beating Camper by less than two minutes after 15 days' racing from Cape Town. The risky business to load the boats began immediately after the finish. Each boat is worth around $10 million, but is invaluable to the round the world race.