Sailing: High seas, high drama, high danger

The respected Briton at the helm of the Swedish challenge, Ericsson, admits: "I still feel pretty green." That makes the average club racer look like a naked Christmas tree and, no, he is not being modest. McDonald is rapidly having to assess exactly what he has bitten off in taking on the race, which starts from Vigo, in north-west Spain, on 12 November. It is due to end on 17 June in Gothenburg.

Born out of an adventure which claimed three lives and was raced in what were essentially big cruising yachts, the Whitbread Race ran from 1973 and then morphed into the all-professional Volvo which, from 1993, used solid 60-footers built in the bulletproof-vest material of Kevlar.

But for this year's race the decision was taken to have something new, something more exciting. It was meant to be cheaper, which it has not turned out to be, and to have a tighter timetable to reduce costs at the stopover ports. Thosecosts have gone up again because these spectacular new boats, the Open 70s, will be eating up miles faster than even the experts predicted, so they will be in port earlier and for longer. But with all that speed comes ever-greater danger.

The vulnerability to breakage applies not just to the boat and gear - as it would with any new piece of kit -but also to the people driving it. The 60s, which were 64 feet long, were crewed by 12 people, and often that was not enough.

The new 70s, which, are less than 10 per cent longer but about 25 per cent more powerful, have an offshore crew of 10. "We went up to Cape Finisterre to pick up a gale and a downhill ride of about 15 hours, and we were exhausted," said McDonald as he took a break from the hectic programme of preparation in Vigo. He expects that all hands will be needed on deck whenever there is a major change, like sails. So much for organised sleep.

Anyone could lap Silverstone at 30mph, but averaging over 100mph takes more than swagger and bravado. McDonald has to be able to career along at high speed over a surface that is not just moving but has big roller waves - the equivalent of skiing's black-run moguls - to negotiate, debris such as containers lost overboard and ice, which can smash rudders and keels, often in the black of night.

At speeds of up to 35 knots, the waves and spray rushing over the deck can knock over the unwary and soak everyone. Sleep in the damp below is made more difficult by the jerky motion and the noise is amplified by the hull, effectively an unlined carbon- fibre drum.

So, McDonald also has a serious man-management job to do. Exhaustion brings mistakes and mistakes can cost, at best, race points, at worst lives. Learning to handle these boats has meant importing techniques from other areas of McDonald's career, such as short-handed sailing or controlling big multihulls. But he insists: "The dangers and pressures are imposed by us, not by the boat. We can always back off." McDonald is not a man who likes to do that but, as he says: "At the end of the day you have in-built survival instincts."