Have I mentioned I love the Volvo Ocean Race? Oh, yes. I have.

The first leg, from Alicante, Spain, to Cape Town, South Africa, ended yesterday, with the Abu Dhabi Ocean Racing boat, Azzam, the first across the finish line.

Azzam needed 25 days to cover the 6,500 nautical miles from the Mediterranean to the southern tip of Africa.

And by the time they finished … the crew was thrashed.

The crews have been reduced to eight men (11, for the women’s boat, Team SCA), from the 11 of the most recent race, a cost-control measure over the 2011/12 race, which was done in boats a bit bigger than the current Volvo 65.

Fewer hands, same task, more work. But cheaper, yes.

But another factor is the one-design aspect of the boats. They are identically prepared and, from everything we have seen so far, they race nearly identically, too.

What that means is this: The seven boats were within sight of each other for much of the race. Because on the same course with the same amount of win, the boats will go the same speed.

And the upshot of that is the kicking in of the competitive instincts of skippers and crews.

Leg 1 often seemed like a match race on the high seas. In the middle of the Atlantic. Or it became a three- or four-way battle between skippers trying to gain 100 yards an hour — a thousand miles from land.

That works fine for, say, an America’s Cup race, which is out and back on shore in the same day. That even worked as recently as the last Volvo race, because the ships had different characteristics, and on a reach that boat would be the fastest, and off it went, out of sight of the fleet for days or weeks.

These guys were at sea for 25 days (and two boats have yet to land, and they will be gone something like 27 days) … and the demands of eyeball-to-eyeball racing seemed to thrash them.

By following the website reports from each boat, and well as The National’s direct  contract with Azzam, it became clear the crew was sleeping very little. It seems to require the whole crew to change tack, or change sails, and whichever half of the crew was (in theory) not on deck and, perhaps sleeping, were dragged up to the deck to perform with the four guys who were on duty.

(One of the onboard reporters suggested that the 6,500nm race had become “inshore racing without the shore”.)

The skippers, certainly including Ian Walker of Azzam, were bouncing up on deck after maybe an hour of sleep.

Because that was Dongfeng, just behind. Or Vestas. Or Brunel. All staffed by elite endurance sailors. All of them looking for every little advantage. And a sailor is not going to let one of them pass if he can help it — and every skipper is sure he can help it.

One of our reporters talked to Walker, via a satellite phone hookup, and he seemed to be getting a little goofy after the first couple of weeks.

As Azzam hit a spot of dead air, just a mile or two from the Cape Town finish, Walker was back on deck, and (in the words of one of our reporters) “was starting to look more than a little crazed”.

A puff of breeze finally came up, and Azzam crossed the line, to the relief of all onboard. There were hugs and handshakes, and a few interviews.

It was a big deal. They won Leg 1 three years to the day that their mast had broken, on Day 1, in the 2011-12 race, which was the pivot of the comment piece that I wrote for The National. A shocking event that doomed the chase for offshore racing’s biggest prize before Azzam had cleared Gibraltar.

The Emirati member of the crew, Adil Khalid, talked to us. But Walker?

He was already gone. We have to assume to bed. Where he will do what he can to see to his perhaps severe case of sleep deprivation.

Which means this race is going off in a whole new direction.

Not only are these guys sailing around the world, trying to find the fastest routes while dodging dangers above and below the water line, they are going to do it in a tight little pack, and those hour-to-hour competitions have a chance to break down the crews.

Is it worth it? Is it even possible, to go into sleep deprivation again and again over the course of nine months?

The sailors would no doubt say yes. The rest of us? We will wait and see. But Leg 1 was kinda scary.