Ken Read says the new Volvo 70 yacht, in ideal conditions, could complete the 2008 Newport Bermuda Race in a little more than a day.

The Providence Journal / Frieda Squires

NEWPORT — The Volvo Ocean Race will take seven 70-foot racing yachts around the world (if they all survive) in nine legs, including a 12,000-nautical-mile run from China to Brazil. When Newport’s Ken Read, skipper of Puma Ocean Racing, looks at the event, he sees it as a series of thousands of sprints, rather than one colossal marathon.

Read, who learned to sail on Narragansett Bay, has returned to the Bay with an international crew to train for the Volvo race, scheduled to start Oct. 4 in Alicante, a Spanish port.

This week, Read and his crew were training on Rhode Island Sound aboard their new Volvo 70, built by Goetz Custom Yachts in Bristol. Their training partner is the former ABN Amro Two, which set a 24-hour speed record in the last Volvo race, completing 562.4 miles in 24 hours.

The new boat should be faster, Read says. In ideal conditions, it could complete the 2008 Newport Bermuda Race in a little more than a day. The 635-mile race starts June 20.

“It hasn’t been since the America’s Cup in the early 1980s that Newport has seen a real, full-fledged two-boat, grand prix racing program,” Read said as he walked from Puma Ocean Racing headquarters at the Newport Shipyard to the two boats, each hand-painted to look like a Puma running shoe.

Two Volvo teams, Ericcson and Alicante, each have built two boats for training and racing. Having one new boat and the former ABN Amro Two, is like having a one-and-a-half boat training program, Read said.

Aboard the new Puma boat, members of his crew have been outfitting and testing key components, including the canting keel.

Read selected his crew from more than 400 candidates. Many of the world’s best professional sailors are available this year, he said, “because the America’s Cup is in such a mess,” mired in international legal squabbling.

Each boat in the Volvo event will carry a sailing crew of 10 with an additional media representative to document life aboard each boat.

Soon after Puma Racing recruited Read as skipper last year, he enlisted his longtime bowman and friend, Jerry Kirby, also of Newport. At 51, he is the eldest member of the crew. “If you’re in a storm, he’s the guy you want standing next to you,” Read said. “The nastier a storm gets, the more Jerry thrives in it.”

Read and his navigator, English sailor Andrew Cape, will be responsible for strategy. Cape has circumnavigated the planet five times. In the 2005-2006 Volvo race, Cape was sailing aboard moviestar when its skipper ordered the crew to abandon ship as it was in danger of sinking.

Almost immediately after the moviestar crew was rescued from a lifeboat, Cape joined the Ericcson Racing Team to complete the race. “He’s either the gutsiest guy I’ve ever met or not the brightest,” Read said, “but you could say the same for all of us: There’s a fine line between guts and sheer stupidity.”

The boat’s media representative will be Rick Deppe, 43, a video photographer who has worked on Discovery’s Deadliest Catch. When a storm hits, Read said, Deppe is likely to climb the mast to get a better shot of the deck.

During the last Volvo race, Read sailed several legs as the driver aboard Ericcson. Though several members of his crew — including Kirby — have circumnavigated the planet, Read said they view the next Volvo race in small pieces.

“Most distance races now give you snapshots of the fleet. We carry our own [GPS] beacons so the organizing authority knows exactly — to the foot — where everyone is. In this particular race, every six hours, we will know where everyone is, so those of us who grew up as inshore, around-the-buoy races, look at this race as a series of thousands of six-hour races.

“You’re always setting yourself up for the next six hours … so the marathon becomes a series of sprints.”

tmeade@projo.com