BRUSSELS, Belgium — The sailors aboard the sleek yachts of the Volvo Ocean Race fleet know how to fend with the dangers of icebergs, mountainous seas and violent thunderstorms. But until now, pirates were not on their radar.

With the race including Asian waters for the first time, piracy has become an added concern for the boats now sailing northward to India and then from there to Southeast Asia — until recently the world's worst piracy zone before the surge of hijackings off the African nation of Somalia.

"It is hard enough to get this circus around the world. Now we got to deal with ransom money?" Kimo Worthington, head of the Puma racing team, said in a video posted on the race's Web site this weekend.

The race started in Alicante, Spain, in early October. Its 10 legs will take the fleet around the world, spanning nine months and 39,000 nautical miles.

The single-hulled yachts, 70½ feet long with soaring 103-foot masts, can go as fast as 29 mph in the right conditions, allowing them to outrun most pirates. But if the wind dies down, their speed drops, and they would be vulnerable to pirates in motorboats.

The race's eight yachts left Cape Town, South Africa, on Nov. 15 on the second leg of the contest. They were told to sail out hundreds of miles east from southern Africa before turning north toward India to keep well away from Somalia's pirates.

"Piracy is something that is taken very seriously," the race's spokesman, Lizzie Ward, said in a telephone interview Monday from race headquarters near Southampton, England.

The boats are expected to arrive in Kochi, India, beginning Sunday and the crews will get security briefings to discuss the threats from pirates in Southeast Asia.

"Race management will meet with skippers and crews. They will evaluate what's coming up and the sort of dangers they might face," Ward said.

The race's third leg starts in Kochi in mid-December and goes to Singapore through the Strait of Malacca — a narrow seaway between Indonesia and Malaysia that accounts for 40 percent of piracy worldwide, according to the International Maritime Organization.

Worthington, chief of the Puma racing team, said there was no question of putting weapons aboard the racing yachts to fend off pirates.

"We are not taking any guns. Guns are dumb. Violence breeds violence," he said on the race's Web site.

He said his Puma yacht would quit the race if the crew felt threatened.

In another posting, Roger Nilson, navigator of the Telefonica Black yacht, said he would never enter a piracy area if he were cruising on a sailing yacht. "But now I am on a racing boat," he said. "... These boats don't have much money (on board). But in the eyes of pirates look very attractive, I guess."

On the Net:

Volvo Ocean Race: http://www.volvooceanrace.org