Ocean Warriors: The Thrilling Story of the 2001/2002 Volvo Ocean Race Round the World [Hardcover]

Rob Mundle (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: January 7, 2003

An account of the 2001 Volvo Ocean Race describes the grueling ten-month-long challenges and conditions faced by its competitors every four years, tracing the journey of the Team News Corp. around the world.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Mundle (The Fatal Storm) recounts the nine months he spent aboard the Team News Corp boat in last year's Volvo Ocean Race, and all the excitement and setbacks that ensued. The nine-leg VOR has been held every four years over the past three decades. This 32,000-nautical mile race offers no prize money; participants brave temperature extremes, squalid living conditions, and sometimes 60-knot winds and seas "like liquid cliffs" just so they can sharpen the razor's edge. After incisive anecdotes in early passages, this chronicle soon suffers from too rigid a structure and not enough real-time storytelling. Mundle jettisons putting a face on the umpteen principals, and instead relies on excerpts from their observations, which disrupts the narrative and melds people (and events) into one another. It's like reading the transcripts of a gripping documentary, when all you really want to do is watch the movie. His set-up and wrap-up of individual adventures, including a skipper's gamble to sail between two iceberg peaks and crew members circumnavigation of a most unwelcome tornado, are indeed nail-biting, but the outcome's often foretold. Only as the race draws to a close does the action unfold in straightforward exposition.
Copyright 2002 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Booklist

For the uninitiated, the Volvo Ocean Race (VOR), which takes place every four years, covers roughly 32,000 nautical miles and lasts almost 10 months. The VOR is grueling, nonstop sailing, and only the world's best even consider the possibility of entering the race. In the 2001-02 competition, with the longest course in the race's 30-year history, entrants departed from Southampton, England, sailed through the Atlantic down to South America, across the Southern Ocean to Australia and New Zealand, across the Pacific to Brazil, up to the U.S. (Miami and then Baltimore), and across the Atlantic to Sweden and Germany. This exciting book follows one entrant, Team News Corp, through that race. Combining thrilling, you-are-there narrative passages with quotes from the participants, Mundle (Fatal Storm, 1999) plunks readers right down on the Team News Corp yacht and sends them along on the voyage. Team News Corp placed fifth in the race, but that hardly seems important--as the author amply demonstrates, completing the race is all the reward that's needed. Perfect for fans of true-life, high-seas adventure. David Pitt
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 224 pages
• Publisher: Harper (January 7, 2003)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0060508086
• ISBN-13: 978-0060508081
• Product Dimensions: 10.5 x 7.1 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.6 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,386,947 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Entertaining read about a grueling sporting event., February 13, 2004

By A Customer

This review is from: Ocean Warriors: The Thrilling Story of the 2001/2002 Volvo Ocean Race Round the World (Hardcover)

I enjoyed this big. I could relate to a lot of the feelings that the crew members, and the author of the book, described. I especially could understand the concept of laying in your bunk, the boat picthing wildly upwind, thinking to yourself, 'What the hell am I doing here?' I don't know how many times that thought has gone through my mind during less than hospitable off shore passages.

Nothing I can say though, can justify just how well this book conveyed the incidents of the 2001-2002 VOR, and especially, the experinces, both good and bad, of Team News Corp.