Yachting: Volvo fleet heads to Southern Ocean

Southern Ocean icebergs will have to be negotiated by the Volvo Ocean Race yachting fleet after it leaves Cape Town at midnight tonight (NZ time) and heads to Melbourne.

New Zealander Mike Sanderson skippers leg-one winner ABN AMRO One and will look to head off challenges from a small fleet carrying a swag of other New Zealand crew.

The 10,000km seond leg is regarded as one of the toughest in the eight-month event and organisers have had reports of large icebergs floating off the coast of Antarctica.

The race's website said today the Australian Antarctic division had reported a 24km long iceberg floating halfway between South Africa and Australia and race organisers have added weypoint gates to force the fleet north.

"The biggest danger to the boats is small pieces of ice that are virtually invisible to the radar and often to the naked eye," the website says.

"These growlers are most likely to cause serious damage to the boats ... "

Sanderson said it was easy for the yachties to feel confident heading into the Southern Ocean leg, but was pleased the weypoints had been added.

"I always feel for the guys who have to hand over their little ones back to their wives and mums -- that's pretty heart wrenching to know that you are responsible for them and are taking them down to the Southern Ocean and are going to be charging at icebergs at 30 knots in the middle of the night with limited visibility," he said.

Another New Zealander, Richard Mason, on fourth-placed Swedish boat, Ericsson, said the Southern Ocean was known as the "liquid Himalayas".

"With no landmass restraining the energy of the sea, it's brutal down there ... It's very, very cold."

Following the Dutch ABN AMRO One boat in points after leg one are Brasil 1, followed by ABN AMRO two, Ericsson Racing Team, Movistar, ING Real Estate Brunei and Pirates of the North Caribbean.

- NZPA