This is a sailing event that lasts nine months, so it’s not like you need to follow it day by day on the first leg of the round-the-world race to have a sense of the eventual winner.

But I am doing just that. Following it day by day.

I find it fascinating. Circumnavigating the globe in 65-meter sailboats, boats built for speed and not for comfort.

Which can be a problem when nine guys are living on board (or, in the case of the all-women’s boat, SCA, with 12 people on board). The boats are packed with sails and gear and back-up rudders (one boat already is using its other rudder) and freeze-dried food, and the crew is stuck there for up to a month at a time.

We had a telling story about how uncomfortable the race can be, from lack of space and creature comforts. And here is the photo gallery that accompanies the story.

We at The National are following the race because Abu Dhabi Ocean Racing sponsors one of the seven boats, named Azzam — which is Arabic for “determination”.

And, actually, we have a microsite on the newspaper’s website with regular updates of the situation at sea, which can be found here.

Blue-water sailing often is a lonely business. It has been noted how far away help is if a boat suffers an emergency deep in the Pacific, or in the middle of the Atlantic. Azzam nearly fell apart while in the Southern Ocean, three years ago, and one of the crew noted that often, when sailing this race, “the closest thing to you is a satellite.”

Those of us lucky/unlucky enough to be on dry land can follow the race thanks to the VOR website, and social media, too.

You can find the Volvo Ocean Race website here … and if you sign up for updates, every three hours you will get an email showing the race order of the seven boats, with distances noted between each boat — and a one-click opportunity to see where the boats are on a map of the world. A map you can enlarge until you appreciate how far apart the boats are.

At the moment, it is about 200 miles from the leader, Abu Dhabi, to the last-place SCA team, which remains stuck in the equatorial doldrums.

The website carousel on the home page also gives access to the “best of the blogs” from the on-board reporter, a Volvo innovation. Every boat is required to carry an on-board reporter who takes photos and videos, and writes a daily blog. The on-board reporter can cook and putter around, but is not allowed to help with sailing except in case of emergencies.

I find it compelling. Having read dozens of books about the Age of Sail (in particular, the Aubrey-Maturin series by Patrick O’Brian, and particularly the British navy during the Napoleonic Wars, I feel like I recognize some of this. I have not lived it, and never will, but it seems somehow familiar.

And I will follow it right through to the end, in Sweden, next year.