More than 40 yachts set off this afternoon to race around Ireland. With freeze-dried food, little sleep, exposure to the elements and lots of hard work, it will be a gruelling few days - but winning will make it all worthwhile. Catherine Cleary meets some of the people involved in the BMW Round Ireland Yacht Race 2006
The floor has started to tilt and pitch under us. Barry Lyons is holding two imaginary straps, one at head height, the other at his waist, swaying from side to side. Everyone around us is having a quiet coffee in the half-empty cafe of the National Gallery of Ireland. But suddenly we are aboard a yacht in the teeth of an Atlantic gale. If he reaches out one hand, Lyons explains with a grin, he could pat the head of a sleeping crew member through a canvas screen. He could also grab his mug of tea from the "kitchen", another arm's length away.
He is demonstrating how a Round Ireland yachtsman answers a call of nature at sea, and it eliminates any illusion that the race, which starts today off Wicklow Harbour, is anything approaching glamorous. Exhilarating, gruelling, life-enhancing and as competitive as the landlocked business world that many of its participants inhabit? Definitely. But if "yacht" conjures up honey-limbed lovelies, vermouth and crisp boating whites, then the Round Ireland is not your event.
A Dublin solicitor who sailed the Atlantic in 2004, Lyons and his 13 fellow crew members will at least be enjoying more comfortable cabin arrangements than some of the competitors. Their 19.5m (64ft) chartered yacht, sailing under the company colours as Lyons Solicitors, at least has a set of narrow beds and "heads" - bowls that swing with the boat on a tilting axis to serve as toilets. Eight of the yachts taking part in the race will be two-handers, many of them half the size of the Lyons boat. And, if the weather is challenging, some of these sailors will be grabbing naps wedged up against the weather rails of their boats.
More than 40 yachts are expected to line up this afternoon, watched by crowds gathered on the town's East Pier and on Wicklow Head. The race's organisers, at Wicklow Sailing Club, are expecting a fantastic spectacle, including the longest yacht yet to take part, the 30m (98.5ft) Konica Minolta Zana, owned by a New Zealander named Stewart Thwaites.
When the starting gun is fired, at 4pm, for the BMW Round Ireland Yacht Race 2006, large and small boats and their crews will throw themselves to the whims of the elements. Over the next three to six days the tides and winds could take them around the 1,130km (704 mile) course in record time or leave them floating on glassy seas, waiting for conditions to change.
Since the two-yearly event was first held, in 1980, with barely more than a dozen boats, the country that sailors have raced around has changed beyond recognition. Significant amounts of the money generated on land have been poured into yachting, and this year's boats are bigger and better than ever.
Lyons belongs to a crew of eight amateur sailors and four professionals. Most of his friends were 10 and 11 years old when the race was first run. Now all but one of the eight businessmen are self-employed, "everything from serviced offices to lighting agent to financial services", he says. Two of them, Norman McDonald and Thomas Lenehan, completed the 12-day Atlantic crossing with him in November 2004. They will sail the same boat in this race, a Volvo 60, which is "really quick", he says with the kind of gleam in his eye that a boy gets standing in front of a toy-shop window.
Taking part will cost about €35,000, excluding insurance. Like every other competitor, they are going to have a crack at the record, of just under 76.5 hours, set by Colm Barrington in 1998.
Friendships can be forged or splintered on a salty adventure such as the Round Ireland, as people share cramped conditions and battle the elements. "There is not going to be any shouting on the boat," Lyons says firmly. It is important that good decisions are made in reaction to the sea and wind and that people know what they are doing. "A rope is like a muscle. It can only contract. You can't push a rope; you can only pull it. And some of these ropes have eight- to 10-ton loads on the end." If two people start to pull in the wrong directions, "the boat is going to break".
Lyons says that yacht racing is an "unbelievable escape" from the world of corporate law. "Your priorities boil down to getting sleep, getting up, asking how windy is it. How fast are we going? All on a cycle of four hours on and four hours off."
The crew on his yacht will sleep in narrow bunks, feet first in case the boat comes off a wave heavily, with their arms across their chests, as the berths are too narrow for any other position. "It's like walking down into a crypt," he says.
His wife, the former model Sonia Reynolds, tells him that boats such as the one he will be racing on smell of socks and men in cramped quarters.
So, just to recap: today's race offers an expensive adventure in the most basic conditions; regular portions of freeze-dried food to pack in the 5,000 calories a day needed for the physical demands; the smell of salt-soaked socks in your sleep; and waking hours spent with cold brine stinging your face as you sit for hours against a rail as human ballast. Throw in zero prize money for the winners (just the highly coveted trophies) and why would anyone do it? Everyone you speak to about this race has their golden moment. "The thrill of it has to be coming off a wave in the Atlantic at 25 knots," Lyons says. "That's 30mph [ 45km/h] in the middle of the night with just a few of you on deck. It's awesome." One of the race founders, Fred Drew, has compared surfing Atlantic rollers to riding a horse in the Grand National without reins.
Peter Coad knows the thrill of the Round Ireland better than many. When he was 15 he sailed on Raasay of Melfort, the boat that won the 1980 race, skippered by his father, Brian Coad. They completed the course in just over six days, winning on a handicap.
Coad has sailed the race a further three times in the intervening years; this year he is skippering a boat for the first time, in a two-hander with his brother-in-law Darren Nicholson. He knows their 11.5 metre (38ft) family boat, Blackjack, is not going to be the fastest yacht in the race. It was built the year he won with his father. "Ours is really a vintage car." If the wind drops they won't have much of a chance, but with a strong wind anything can happen. "You don't enter a race like this unless you want to have a go and see."
Coad grew up in "landlocked" Inistioge, in Co Kilkenny; his father, who was the local vet, took the family sailing at every opportunity. "All our holidays were going sailing, down to France, to the south of England or to west Cork."
He and Nicholson will sail in three-hour stints, allowing one of them to go below deck to rest while the other takes over. In tough weather both will be up on deck, manoeuvring the boat, but sleep is essential for a two-man crew. If one or both of them are deprived of sleep, they could make mistakes.
Each stage of the race has its challenges. Wisdom has it that any boat that is going to retire will do so before Fastnet Rock. If a boat rounds the rock it will usually finish the race. Drift nets on the west coast are one hazard, but not a severe one, Coad says. "A lot of the boats will be able to just sail over them."
The end stage tests many of the crews, as they battle fatigue and the tides of the east coast. Once they reach the last stage they are coming into the busy shipping lanes around Dublin.
Coad's father's spirit will be with them on the voyage. "If he was here he'd be going," he says. Brian Coad was killed in a car accident between New Ross and Waterford in January 2004. So many people came to his funeral, in Inistioge, that two churches had to be linked by video to accommodate the crowd.
Dennis Noonan willbe on the committee boat, at the end of the flotilla of yachts today, ready to see the start of the 14th race. He has been sailing since he was a child, and he has been asked to join numerous crews, but he always found himself too busy with the organisation to take up the offers.
Now feeling his age - and arthritis - he regrets not taking part in the race that he puts so much effort into organising. "They say you should have a foot of boat for every year of your age. So I would need a very large boat at this stage." He estimates there are more sailors involved in the race than ever, with bigger crews on the bigger boats funded by the "loads of new, very wealthy Irish people". During the 2000 race he got a call from an English friend as he was sitting up in the control office, one evening around sunset. "He said he just had to call, because he was off the west coast on a glorious sunny fine evening, and they were coasting along with the spinnaker up; he said: 'Ireland looks absolutely magic with the sun setting on her.' "
Mobile phones were banned for the first few years they were available, with the radio checks completed by each crew at sea stations around the coast providing the only information on a boat's whereabouts. That rule has been relaxed. "Now everybody knows where everybody is, with Mary ringing Jim to see how he's getting on and Jim ringing Mary to tell her where he is," Noonan says. "But there are still the very serious competitors who don't want anyone to know where they are." These lurkers do the safety calls to the coastal stations but otherwise stay off the radio and the mobile.
The race is extremely competitive. One year two boats crossed the line together, despite approaching from completely different angles. A dead heat was recorded. Despite the days it takes to finish the race, a matter of seconds can separate the winners from the also-sailed.
The small clubhouse at Wicklow Sailing Club is a long way from glitzy marinas and cocktail bars. The club is fiercely proud of its race and the starting spectacle that goes with it, which is the highlight of the race festival. "Dún Laoghaire tried to take it off us a few years ago, but they can't. They would love to get this race from us. But it's our race. We own it. It is fantastic to have these €1 million boats lined up beside an old fish quay and a harbour."
The RTÉ journalist Feargal Keane first competed in the Round Ireland in 1994, on a Shamrock 30 with five other crew; they took six days to complete the course. He did it again four years later, on a bigger and faster boat, and found that much more enjoyable. "The crew really jelled that time. It's the biggest part of the race, getting on with each other. As you get older, and have done more sailing, any incompetence really grates on you, and if you're dealing with it for days on end it can be very fraught."
Keane has a memory of his last race that will stay with him forever. They were off Co Louth on what should have been their last night at sea. They could see a storm ahead, with fingers of lightning coming down from a threatening sky. The sea had stilled and the water turned to glass. As the lightning approached, the rigging of the boat started to buzz and crackle. "I'd never been scared on a boat before that moment," Keane says. "But there was nothing we could do. We were completely exposed, and we just had to wait for the storm to pass over us."
He is not quite as misty-eyed as some about the race's magic. "On days when the sea and the sky are the same shade of grey, and the coastline all looks the same, and it's always on your right-hand side," he says - referring to the fact that the course takes a clockwise route around Ireland - "doing the race again is not an attractive prospect."
But even he concedes that approaching the finish line brings a "fantastic sense of achievement". After days at sea "you can smell the land", with all the promise it holds for a homeward-bound sailor: family, friends, pints, real food and real toilets.
The BMW Round Ireland Yacht Race 2006 starts at 4pm today, off the lighthouse at Wicklow Harbour's East Pier. The day's festival events include a local artists' exhibition, puppet show and face-painting
A QUICK GUIDE TO THE ROUND IRELAND
• Three days, four hours, 23 minutes and 57 seconds. That's the time everyone wants to beat. It is the record set by Colm Barrington in 1998.
• The race must be completed under sail from start to finish. Contestants may use their yachts' engines only in emergencies or to power electronic equipment. All use of the engine has to be logged.
• Boats are graded according to size and given a handicap. Line honours go to the first boat across the line, with the winner awarded on the handicap system. In other words a smaller boat can take longer than a larger one to complete the race but still win. The winner of the 2004 race, Calyx Voice & Data, was the smallest boat in that year's race, at 9.75m (32ft). This year it will be competing under the name Teng Tools. (It is normally known as Voodoo Chile.)
• Boats must make radio reports to nine coastguard radio stations around the coast as they pass key locations.
• The sailors will cover anywhere between 1,130km (704 miles) and 1,430km (890 miles), depending on conditions. The rules are simple: Leave Ireland and all its islands to starboard.