Volvo Ocean Race Leg 2 Day 13

Weary crew in leg 3 of the Volvo Ocean Race

Volvo Ocean Race Leg 2 Day 13

By Volvo Ocean Race media on 3 Feb3 February 2012Weary crew in leg 3 of the Volvo Ocean Race © Nick Dana/Abu Dhabi Ocean Racing/Volvo Ocean Race

Iker Martínez’s Team Telefónica were today on course for their third consecutive leg victory of the 2011-12 edition of the Volvo Ocean Race as they led the six boat fleet on the final miles of the second stage of Leg 3 from the Maldives to Sanya, China.

At 1300 UTC today Telefónica were 274 nautical miles (nm) from the finish line and had extended their lead over Franck Cammas’ second placed Groupama sailing team to 29 nm.

Almost 31 nm behind, Chris Nicholson’s CAMPER with Emirates Team New Zealand sat in third with a 15 nm lead over Ian Walker’s Abu Dhabi Ocean Racing in fourth.

Ken Read’s PUMA Ocean Racing powered by BERG were fifth, but had positioned themselves east of the fleet and beginning to make gains on Abu Dhabi and CAMPER.

Mike Sanderson’s sixth placed Team Sanya had reached the Vietnam coast and making good progress towards the finish despite having to repair a fitting on their mainsail.

Overall race leaders Telefónica finished the first stage of Leg 3 -- a one day sprint from Abu Dhabi to Sharjah -- in fifth, before the fleet was loaded aboard a secure cargo ship and transferred through a high risk piracy zone to the then secret safe haven port of Malé in the Maldives.

Martínez’s crew had languished in last place early in the second stage of Leg 3 after damage to their key code zero headsail hours after the start had slowed them down for a full day.

By the time the fleet reached the first turning point on the north west tip of Sumatra, however, Telefónica were back to full speed and took the lead after smartly positioning themselves as the most northerly boat.

Speaking from the boat today, Martínez put Telefónica’s comeback down to the hard work and resilience of his crew.

“Of course I’m proud of them,” he said. “They did excellent work. Everyone did his job well while helping each other.”

Despite their healthy lead, Martínez said the Telefónica crew had been unable to back off for fear of losing their lead in the closely packed fleet.

“It’s very tight. If anyone does a small mistake, the ranking can change accordingly,” he said. “We were lucky with the wind – we got what we wanted going close to the Vietnam coast. As you can imagine, we are ready to arrive to China now.”

Behind Groupama, a fierce battle was brewing for the final Leg 3 podium position between Chris Nicholson’s third placed CAMPER with Emirates Team New Zealand and Ian Walker’s fourth placed Abu Dhabi Ocean Racing.

Walker’s crew won the opening stage of Leg 3 and, if they remain in fourth, will be tied on points for the leg with CAMPER.

Both crews expressed relief at being able to get away from the Vietnamese coast after each narrowly avoiding collisions with floating debris and unmarked hazards.

CAMPER navigator Will Oxley said the crew had narrowly avoided disaster on more than one occasion and had been slowed by fishing nets on their keel several times.

“With poor quality charting multitudes of unlit fishing vessels and miles of nets not to mention shallow wrecks from the war, the potential for disaster was high,” he said.

“We had some very near misses and ended up hooking up fishing gear a couple of times.”

Abu Dhabi skipper, Ian Walker said that his team had been close to sustaining major damage in the night when they had to swerve at the last second to miss an unlit metal navigation buoy.

“We missed it by a metre and for sure it would have made a big mess of our bow,” he said.

Walker added he was uncertain if Abu Dhabi would be able to close down CAMPER before the finish.

“Whether there will be anymore passing opportunities I am not sure as we are all now set up on starboard, close to pointing at Sanya and the leg finish.”

In fifth, PUMA looked to be hoping a final roll of the dice could help them pull back at least one place as they positioned themselves to the east of the pack to benefit first from better winds.

At 1300 UTC they remained in fifth but were averaging one knot faster than the other boats.

PUMA Media Crew Member Amory Ross said the team were exhausted but resigned to having no chance to rest before they got ashore as they fought their way to the finish.

“The strategy from here seems simple: don’t give up too much leverage and play each shift like it’s the last,” he said.

“The racecourse has become small enough that any gain is an important one—regardless of its size—and it promises to be a busy 36 hours of hard work fighting for every length of distance on the competition. Anything can happen.”

Leaders Telefónica are expected to complete the second stage of Leg 3 in Sanya some time after 0430 UTC (1230 local time) tomorrow February 4, with Groupama, CAMPER, Abu Dhabi and PUMA all expected to finish later that day.

Team Sanya are expected to receive a warm homecoming welcome the following day February 5 at around 1300 UTC (2100 local time).

Views from Groupama 4

Groupama 4 and the other five VO-70s have been sailing upwind since exiting the Straits of Singapore, with a 36-hour beat along the Vietnamese coast! Even though the temperatures are balmy, the atmosphere on board is rather wet and very uncomfortable, especially as it has been necessary to perform a great many manœuvres to protect themselves from the counter current near the Asian shores. All the crews seem to have had to dig deep and this finaltack, where they will gradually be able to open their sails, will almost be a release before they catch sight of the Chinese coast.

“It was hard work tacking along the coast: we had to perform around twenty changes of tack and it's a little complicated on these boats. It takes a good ten minutes of considerable energy and the whole crew has to be woken up for it. It's pretty frustrating because, in addition to that, you don't make very fast headway towards the goal when you're zigzagging in this way! We thought all that would come to an end nicely but, in fact, since this morning,we've been continuing to tack in some very shifty winds. The worst of these conditions hit us when we were leaving Vietnam, midway through last night, and heading offshore: against a small, fairly steep swell, we were full-on slamming as we jumped from one wave to the next,” indicated Franck Cammas during a radio link-up with the Volvo Ocean Race HQ.

In these conditions, the gear is particularly under pressure and Groupama 4 broke her mainsheet earlier. Such damage could have caused things to turn very sour but the crew managed to effect repairs very quickly.

“We heard a bang and ten seconds later the mainsheet came away. We replaced it. It could have been very dangerous if anyone had been near the block, but it went fine. We did lose a good five miles in the affair though! Telefonica has a good safety margin: she's very quick upwind and even though we make good speed with sheets eased, they seem to have got too much of a lead for us to be able to worry them. The whole crew is drained as it's been anexhausting leg, one of the most difficult so far for the men. They've demonstrated how fired up they are for this, battling the whole time, and last night everyone really gave their all…”

Views from CAMPER

For the past 24 hours CAMPER has been tacking up the Vietnamese coast avoiding hundreds of fishing boats, debris and uncharted marks and islands. For navigator Will Oxley the final tack away from Vietnam coast came with a huge amount of relief:

"With poor quality charting, multitudes of unlit fishing vessels and miles of nets, not to mention shallow wrecks from the war, the potential for disaster was high. We had some very near misses and ended up hooking up fishing gear a couple of times.”

The constant manoevering of the boat is exhausting for for the crew as well with relentless sail changes and shifting of sails and equipment with each tack.

Media Crew Member Hamish Hooper, sums up the experience from onboard: "I lost count of the number of tacks [we made] early into last night. Each tack on these boats is an exhaustive process, its not just turning the helm, easing some sheets and pulling on other ones. It can take up to 20 minutes to just get set for the tack moving around 4 tonnes above and below deck; sails, spares, personal gear, food and any and everything else that is movable on the boat.

This has pretty much been the life onboard for the last 24 hours. It’s not hard to equate lots of tacking to very little, if not any sleep. There are a lot of heavy, red eyes around this morning. But that’s just how hard all of the guys are pushing this last stretch of the leg, and how hungry they are to get as far up the leaderboard as possible, there is certainly no lack of desire to win onboard CAMPER."

"Tacking up the coast from Vietnam in the dark was literally running a gauntlet of sandbanks, wrecks and fishing boats and nets. There were hundreds and hundreds of fishing boats all around us the whole way up the coast, everywhere you looked in all directions were fishing boats all with nets ranging from maybe a hundred metres to many miles long. It amazes me that there are even any fish left in the waters here."

CAMPER still has her sights firmly set on clawing back the miles on the leading boat over what remains of the race track and with darkness approaching in the South China Sea, the crew are hanging on every poll to see just how much they can get back in touch with the front runners.