THE 2005-06 Volvo Ocean Race gets under way today in the most powerful monohulls brought to bear on the global race course amid fears for the boats themselves and the sailors who will drive them.

The new Volvo Open 70s could hardly be more of a contrast to Volvo’s safetyconscious designs for the family car market. The boats are only 10ft longer than the old Volvo 60s, which were used in the last race four years ago, but they are much more powerful and much more dangerous.

Capable of exhilarating performance, with a top speed of up to 40 knots, the super-light Volvo 70s demand total concentration from their ten-man crews, with manoeuvres in rough seas having to be precisely choreographed if spectacular wipe-outs are to be avoided.

The new boats are more complex than the 60s and include hydraulically controlled keels that swing through an arc of 40 degrees either side of the centre line, giving the yachts extra lateral stability, plus daggerboards either side of the mast to prevent the boats slipping sideways. In the long build-up to the first in-port race today off the Galician resort of Sanxenxo, all the skippers have admitted to concerns about how well these new ocean dragsters and their crews will cope with the ordeal. This comprises nine offshore legs amounting to 31,250 nautical miles of ocean racing, including two long stints in the Southern Ocean, alongside seven short inshore races at stopover ports. Circling the globe via Cape Town, Melbourne, Rio de Janeiro, New York and Portsmouth among other places, the race does not finish until the crews reach Gothenburg in mid-June.

“Reliability is going to be a factor in this race,” Mike Sanderson, the New Zealand skipper of the favourite, ABN Amro One, said.

Neal McDonald, of Britain, who skippers Ericsson, admitted to a certain nervousness and fear of the unknown. “These are tricky boats — they are fast and powerful,” he said. “The hardest thing will be to know when to back off. When do we say, ‘Let’s put the no heroes flag up and knuckle down for the night and make sure we see tomorrow in good shape.’ ”

Paul Cayard, the Californian skipper of The Black Pearl, a boat sponsored by Disney in a unique marketing campaign to promote a sequel to the feature film Pirates of the Caribbean, is concerned about the swing keels, which have had a mixed reliability record in other classes. “The technology is a little more on the edge,” he said. “The problem is that if you have a keel issue, you can’t sail any more. If the fleet gets a pounding in the first few days after the start, I wouldn’t be surprised to see three boats get blown straight back in here.”

Volvo delayed for nearly 14 months in announcing the details of the race and this, added to the challenge of introducing a new class of boat and a new course, has meant that the fleet, unsurprisingly, is on the small side. There are six confirmed entries, as well as one from Australia, the Premier Challenge, skippered by Grant Wharington, that looks unlikely to complete the course.

However, there are four strong teams in the field that have attracted top sailors from all over the world. The danger is that the two best prepared, Sanderson’s ABN Amro One and Movistar, skippered by Bouwe Bekking, might already be so far ahead in their development that their rivals never get a chance to catch up. This is best illustrated in the respective sail programmes with ABN Amro One, for example, having tested more than six versions of many of its sails, while Cayard’s The Black Pearl is still back on version two.

McDonald is another skipper who knows that he has a lot to do, but he is not despondent and believes that he has a good chance of becoming the first British skipper to win the Volvo. “We know we’ve got a bit to learn and also we have no real idea about the longevity of all the gear and the sails, so we’ve got to pace ourselves a little but we are all set to give it our best shot,” he said.

The race is scored on cumulative points, with the winner of each leg scoring seven points, with one fewer point awarded for each place behind it. The inshore races account for 20 per cent of the total points and are worth half the leg points, so, assuming a seven-boat fleet, the winner gets 3½ points, with the second-placed crew getting three points and so on. There are also five mid-leg “gates ” that attract the same points as the inshore races.

Today’s inshore contest is expected to be a light-wind affair that will see the crews nervously tip-toeing around the buoys, careful not to damage their boat or those of their rivals. This will be followed a week today by the first offshore leg start, with the fleet setting sail from Vigo for Cape Town, 6,400 nautical miles.

THE MAGNIFICENT SEVEN: HOW THEY LINE UP