The Ocean Race (formerly Volvo Ocean Race and Whitbread Round the World Race) was initially to be raced in two classes of boats: the high-performance, foiling, IMOCA 60 class and the one-design VO65 class which has been used for the last two editions of the race.

However, only the IMOCAs will be racing round the world, while the VO65s will race in The Ocean Race VO65 Sprint which competes in Legs 1, 6, and 7 of The Ocean Race course.

The 14th edition of The Ocean Race was originally planned for 2021-22 but was postponed for one year due to the pandemic, with the first leg starting on January 15, 2023.

Back on January 15, the 11th Hour Racing Team crossed the start line in Alicante, Spain, of the world’s longest and toughest sporting event – The Ocean Race 2022-23.

This extraordinary 31,700 nautical mile (nm) [36,500 mile, 58,700 kilometre] race will see the team sail 24/7 for weeks at a time. The course for the 14th edition of the race is made up of seven legs visiting eight cities (with a fly-by past Kiel, Germany), and will finish in Genoa in June 2023.

This edition also includes the longest leg in the race’s 50-year history. Leg 3 is a 12,750nm [14,672 mile, 23,613 kilometre] one-month-long marathon from Cape Town, South Africa around the bottom of the world to Itajaí, Brazil.

During this leg, the crews will, for the first time in the history of the race, pass all three great southern Capes: Cape of Good Hope, Cape Leeuwin, and Cape Horn.

Australian Boating magazine is following this truly ‘amazing race’ closely, as the fleet includes many of the world’s best ocean racing sailors – in unquestionably some of the fastest, most advanced sailing craft in the world today. It’s a race worth following just for the incredible ‘live’ pictures and videos being filed as the race progresses around the globe.