The BMW Round Ireland Yacht race organised by Wicklow Sailing Club started last weekend.

This tough endurance race runs every two years and is ranked worldwide as one of the toughest races, alongside the infamous Fastnet and Sydney-Hobart races. The boats started on Sunday last, a day later than planned due to severe adverse weather on Saturday night. Galway is well represented in this race, with the Ireland West entry skippered by Aodhan Fitzgerald and crewed by sailors from Galway Bay Sailing Club.

When the entries closed last Saturday, forty yachts had entered. These include some of the newest and fastest racing yachts gracing our waters at the moment. The most famous of which being the 100ft super maxi, Leopard. Recently, with a top speed of 37.4 knots (43mph), they smashed the transatlantic speed record shaving eight hours off the current time to claim their second world record in two years.

To the non-sailing public, racing yachts are seen as slow, ungainly things designed to make you sick and to bruise and hurt you all over. In fact this couldn't be further from the truth. The same amount of high technology goes into designing and building these boats as goes into the top levels of other sports such as formula 1 cars – computer modelling, tunnel and wave testing, high tech materials like carbon fibre and Spectra (a form of polythene which is, weightwise, ten times stronger than steel) and using frictionless bearing pulleys which are lubricated by seawater. Indeed, the speed of some of these boats is so fast that large speed boats have a job keeping up. Before the race, the navigator will have spent many hours trying to model weather, wave and tide predictions in order to pick the fastest route around Ireland.

The weather for this year's rounding has and will continue to be very tough. Gale forecasts for Wednesday and Thursday mean that crews will be in for a 'physical' time. Imagine living your life standing on the back of a galloping horse. That is what it is like while you are working on deck, and living in a washing machine while down below. Sea conditions along the west coast of Ireland will mean waves of up to 25 feet high at times (almost three stories high!). With the big seas and the rain, even down below, the boat will never be anywhere near dry. Crews will be working on a four-hour on/four hour off routine and those on the off watch can be called at any time to help with changing sails. Trying to cook a hot meal in these conditions is a feat in itself!

Why do people participate in such a gruelling race? The exhilaration of having achieved and finishing is a high like no other, and the first night's sleep when you finally arrive back on shore is just the best sleep you will ever have, not to mention that first pint!