It gets worse.

Just when it seemed as if sailing the Volvo Ocean Race represented a level of misery unmatched in world sports … now we learn from our colleague at The National, Osman Samiuddin, their food is nearly unpalatable, as well.

Sailors don’t eat, in the round-the-world race. They “refuel”.

This, on top of being wet, smelly, cramped, seasick, freezing cold, boiling hot, exposed to elements of all descriptions and sleeping poorly if at all.

And occasionally crashing into a reef while doing about 30 mph.

Where do we go to sign up? Or do VOR skippers “Shanghai” sailors, like captain might have a few centuries ago?

If airlines can deliver decent food at 35,000 feet (and as much as we complain about airline food, it usually is not that bad) … why can’t the seven (well, six, minus the boat still stuck on a reef in the Indian Ocean) boats of the Volvo fleet create a meal someone might want to eat?

It seems as if the technology for remaining alive and perhaps “feuled” continues to progress, but it comes with a lack of flavor.

The story linked, above, outlines conditions in which “dinner” is breaking open a bag of freeze-dried … something … and pouring hot water on it.

Of all the hardships seamen went through in the Age of Sail, having food so bland and uninteresting as to need to force it down … does not seem to have been one of them.

This detailed account suggests sailors in the British navy (which ruled the waves, at the time), did fairly well when it came to foodstuffs. (Not to mention drink, which was dispensed at mind-numbing levels.)

And when you compare the situation then, when most captains seemed to be fixated on when and where they would get their next load of fresh vegetables and a passle of live domestic animals, onboard, that the crew could consume at their leisure, the more convinced we are that the current sailor has it worse, with his freeze-dried porridge.

The “trouble” with the Volvo race is that it is all about speed. All of it. And it means propelling the boat forward to the exclusion of everything else. Everything.

That means rudimentary conditions on all levels, and certainly including food — the weight of which can slow down a boat. And we can’t have that.

(Tellingly, when the onboard reporters for the boats take to musing about what they will do, once they return to land, drinking and wenching don’t come up (well, they wouldn’t, but still) … but “having a steak!” often does.

Back in the Age of Sail, it seems to have been acknowledged that a crew had to be eating well — or at least a lot — if they were to be effective when in battle.

Captains in ships of any size had their own quarters and usually their own cook/chef and regularly entertained subordinates at long meals that included wine and hard liquor. And the lower ranks had their daily ration of grog, if their plentiful salt pork and dried peas had not hit the spot.

I admire these Volvo people. Never sleeping more than four hours at a time. Often dripping wet. Wearing the same clothes for weeks.

And breaking up the misery by looking at bags of … something … that they are about to stir some water into and try to gag down.

I could not do that.