Hauling the mail
February 15th, 2006 Posted in sailing
On a slightly different scale than Sarah’s boat, check out this video. It’s got to be one of the most spectacular (and intimidating) pieces of sailing footage I’ve ever seen. Watch the video first, and then read below.
For those of you not familiar with the boat, what you see in the video is the Black Pearl, a Disney sponsored entry into the Volvo Ocean Race, a round-the-world fully crewed race going on right now. Skippered by Paul Cayard, The boat is 70 feet long, is built retty much 100% of carbon fiber, and has a canting keel that that can push the keel bulb, all 4.5 TONS of it, to the windward side of the boat to provide increased leverage and allow the boat to carry an insane amount of sail area. If you look carefully in some of the overhead shots in the video, you can actually see the keel bulb (bright orange) under the water, sticking way out to the side of the boat. Amazing. Even more astonishing is the fact that this 70-foot monster is crewed by only 10 people, half of which are theoretically resting at any one time, so only FIVE lunatics have to keep this beast under control.
The video was taken a few days ago, with the Black Pearl on its way from Melbourne, AUS to Wellington, NZ. They’re probably doing about 30 knots of boatspeed (yikes!) carrying three sails in conditions that would have most sane sailors reefing down to a scrap of sail area or heaving to.
I want to experience sailing like that someday before I die… and hopefully not die doing i! 
Enjoy!