I know just enough about wind-powered sailing to have deep respect for those who do it. Those who cover great distances over blue water.

Distances so great they eventually turn a lap of the planet. I find that mind-boggling.

Around the world, however, is the idea behind the Volvo Ocean Race, originally known as the Whitbread Round the World Race.

And today, in a major “do” at a posh hotel on Abu Dhabi’s Corniche, we were introduced to several members of Abu Dhabi Ocean Racing, the team that will take its second lap of the globe beginning in October.

Consider some of the hardships they will overcome:

–Nine months at sea. If not on it, getting ready to go back, after one of the 10 stops on the circumnavigation, which includes stops at eight host cities, stops that make the race 39,000 miles long — or about half again the actual circumference of the world. (Starting at Alicante, Spain, and concluding at Gothenburg, Sweden.

–Sharing time and space for three or four weeks at a pop with eight or nine other guys, four hours on, four hours off. Unless the ship is tacking or jibing, in which case the whole of the crew needs to be on deck.

–Dealing with something approaching starvation. All teams in the Volvo Ocean Race (and it looks like five or six, this time around) are keen to be as light as possible, and food (even freeze-dried food) weighs a lot. Hence, skippers lay in enough food to get a crew fairly close to its next port of call. In the last Volvo race, one Abu Dhabi crewman lost almost 30 pounds.

–A dependence on desalinated water. Skippers abhor the weight of water, which wind sailors would have stowed in massive casks, 150 years ago, so only a small bit is taken, and the rest is made from the sea. As one sailor told me, if your desalination gear goes bad, “It can be terrifying.”

–Temperatures ranging from below freezing to well above 100 (Fahrenheit) during a rout that includes rounding Cape Horn, at the tip of South America.

And, too, dealing with everything the sea can throw at you, which is beyond impressive and deep into astonishing. Cyclones, huge seas, rogue waves, horrific heat, freezing cold, traffic, debris, doldrums, the Roaring Forties …

In the 2011/12 race, the Abu Dhabi boat, Azzam, suffered a broken mast five hours after the start. That was scary.

Scarier yet was on the other side of the world, realizing Azzam‘s, hull had all but failed. After a period of heavy pounding while riding through swells in the higher latitudes of the Southern Ocean, headed for Cape Horn, the crew realized a part of the boat about halfway down the port side was about to come apart. And at that particular moment, they were only 100 miles away from that point on the planet’s surface furthest from land. It was a situation where lives were at risk.

Azzam dealt with the crisis by taking a square of carbon-fiber-backed skin big enough to cover the hole, swinging one of the crew over the side and having him patch the failing area, securing it with 32 bolts the sailors had made from a length of metal rod carried for just such an exigency.

The Volvo Ocean Race is dangerous and it lasts forever, and I would like to think I could have done it, in my youth, but I’m fairly certain I never could have, given (in part) that I can get seasick in a swimming pool. Given that privacy is elusive, and the privations are significant.

I am impressed that the captain of the 2011-12 effort, the Englishman Ian Walker, is back. In part, however, he is looking forward to a race in which every team is sailing the same sort of boat — the 65-foot Volvo One-Design.

I did a piece for The National, about how the emphasis now shifts from the designer to the sailors, and how Walker is fine with that.

We will be doing more about the 2014/15 race as it comes nearer. The Abu Dhabi boat is a Tourist Board initiative, with the fleet scheduled to be docked here for New Year’s Eve 2014 amid all sorts of activities and celebrations.

Weather permitting, of course.