Volvo Ocean Race: We are Team Alvimedica

(October 3, 2014) – Team Alvimedica is here in Alicante, Spain in the final phase of preparations for the Volvo Ocean Race. We are thinking about all our family, friends and fans who have been with us throughout this amazing journey – and now finally the adventure is about to start!

We know we have been a bit quiet and that’s because we have had our heads down working hard to prepare for the start of this marathon ocean race.

After an awesome six weeks in Newport at the start of the summer, we sailed back across the Atlantic to Southampton, England. There we prepared for the Round Britain and Ireland Race. Racing against four other VO65s gave us a chance to check in with some of our competition as we continued to close the gap with this young team.

Then it was on to Alicante where it’s been great to have the entire fleet in one place. The Volvo Ocean Race organizers put us all through the paces with a “Leg Zero” test. We were able to test our systems and again line up with the competition. While we have done thousands of ocean miles together, our time racing against our competition has been limited. So we gained a lot from this exercise and feel like we are understanding the strengths and weaknesses of the other teams – as well as ourselves – a bit more than we did a few months ago.

We are now in race mode with a few days of race testing here in Alicante to tune us up before today’s practice race and the first Pro-Am Race.

Saturday, October 4 marks the first official competition of the event – the Alicante In-Port Race. We need to shift gears a bit from ocean racing to short-course racing. Five Pro-Am races are on the schedule as well to give our sponsors and media a chance to experience the excitement and team work in racing these boats.

We will stay in touch in the final countdown to Saturday October 11 when we start Leg One to Cape Town, South Africa.

The Volvo Ocean Race is unique in that our fans can follow up 24/7 as we race around the planet. We have a few ways to follow and the first will be on our new team website at teamalvimedica.com. Please check it out.

Our social media channels are kicking in as well with lots of great coverage.

Facebook: www.facebook.com/TeamAlvimedica
Instagram: instagram.com/teamalvimedica
Twitter: twitter.com/TeamAlvimedica
YouTube: www.youtube.com/channel/UC3wMzqWSEGiCwL3I34_Pilg

We hope you will continue on this journey with us. We will be issuing the newsletters through our new team website starting with news from our In-Port racing this weekend.

Thanks for all the support to get us this far – we look forward to sharing this adventure with you!

Stay tuned,

Charlie Enright, skipper
Mark Towill, watch captain
Team Alvimedica, USA/TUR

Please check out our new website: www.teamalvimedica.com

Background: The 2014-15 Volvo Ocean Race starts October 4 and will take the 7-boat fleet to 11 cities in 11 countries – Spain, South Africa, United Arab Emirates, China, New Zealand, Brazil, United States, Portugal, France, The Netherlands, and Sweden – and will require the teams to cover 38,739 nautical miles over nearly nine months. It will be the first edition using the new one design Volvo Ocean 65 racing boats. Race website: http://www.volvooceanrace.com/en/home.html