Volvo Ocean Race - Leg 8 Finish
by Volvo Ocean Race media 11 Jun 2009 17:00 BST
11 June 2009
Ericsson 4 has done it again. In a thrilling finish to leg eight of the
Volvo Ocean Race from Galway to Marstrand, Sweden, Ericsson 4 pulled out all
the stops to take a third leg win in a row. PUMA finished second and, after
a heroic effort from the crew, Green Dragon clung on to third place, to
complete the same order of finish as for leg seven.
Although Ericsson 4's overall lead now seems unassailable (102 points
overall), with just two legs to go until the finish of the race in St
Petersburg later this month, the battle for second place has intensified.
Bouwe Bekking's fourth place on this leg has caused the Telefónica Blue team
to lose their second place overall to PUMA (87 points overall) and they now
trail by one point.
However, at the head of the field and after five days of relentless racing,
Ericsson 4 made her way to the front on day four, arriving at the Rotterdam
Gate in first place. Positions swapped regularly as the fleet toughed out
typical North Sea conditions, and it was by no means certain that Ericsson
4's lead was a given thing.
On arrival in Marstrand this morning, Brazilian skipper Torben Grael was
very matter of fact about his team's victory and prospects of an overall
win. "It was a very important result, a very close race. Green Dragon was
sailing really well and they had an excellent leg. They went to the front
and just stayed there.
"We wanted to have a good result. This is a nice step towards the main goal.
I have to thank this wonderful group because it was a tough leg, a difficult
race and even though it was hard, people were in a good mood on board.
We're very close to winning the race, but we're not there yet," he
concluded.
Piling on the pressure right from the start in Galway when they led the
fleet round the Fastnet Rock off the southwestern tip of Ireland, Ian Walker
and his crew on Green Dragon sailed a fantastic leg. Fighting off
Telefónica Black by daring to go through the notorious Alderney Race, their
final relegation to third position in the closing stages of this leg was,
perhaps, undeserved.
Skipper Ian Walker said, "We sailed pretty much a perfect leg, so there's no
point in being upset. They [PUMA] just did one perfect sched where they did
something like 36 miles dead upwind. I don't know how they did it to be
honest. Until then, they were down and out. We were torn between going over
to cover them and trying to sail our own race. If it was going to be a reach
to the finish, they're about 10 per cent quicker so we figured we'd need
about seven miles. We got back about five miles ahead of them, and it wasn't
quite enough."
The crew of PUMA, after wrecking their biggest spinnaker, had a difficult
time to keep the morale onboard positive. With their best sail in pieces,
the crew had no choice but to cross the low pressure by sailing northwest
for a while. A move that certainly paid off when the team came steaming in
like an express train from the north and snatched second place from the
claws of the Dragon.
"My hat is off for PUMA's brave move, which was very close to making them
win this race," said Telefónica Black's navigator Roger Nilson, who after
leading for a while finished in sixth place and witnessed PUMA blowing out
their sail earlier in the leg.
In his last email from the boat before crossing the finish, PUMA's skipper,
Kenny Read said, "We were wondering how we got into the mess we were in, and
we had to split from the fleet, certainly not something we wished to do.
But, we had a plan B and were going to execute it come hell or high water.
Next came the gale. Forty knots upwind again, while reading the reports of
the fleet having a lovely sail to Sweden. This was the price we had to pay
to get to the northerlies that would eventually catapult us back into the
game.
On reaching the dock in Marstrand, Read was ecstatic: "The 'no-quit' in
this team is beyond imagination. We had every reason to quit and I think
we're kind of stunned to be honest. Twenty-four hours ago, we were sailing
with a triple reef and a number four upwind in a gale, while the other guys
were running down the coast. I give Andrew Cape a lot of credit. We got
ourselves in a tough spot and he got us out of it. He could have said 'let's
just follow them in' and he didn't. He deserves a ton of credit.
"I almost feel bad for Green Dragon. They sailed a great race. That's their
best effort yet. We had a little pace on them in reaching conditions and we
just pipped them," Read said.
The Volvo fleet is now safely moored in Marstrand. Finishing further down
the order were Telefónica Blue (4th), who now slips to third place overall,
Delta Lloyd who stole points on the finish line for fifth place from
one-time leg leader Telefónica Black, and Ericsson 3 who finished in
seventh.
The stop in Marstrand is brief, and, as a Œpit-stop', any repairs that need
to be carried out to the boats will have to be done by the already exhausted
crews themselves as shore crew assistance in a pit-stop is against the
rules. The fleet leaves Marstrand for Stockholm on Sunday 14 June.
Leg Eight Finishing Order
1. Ericsson 4
2. PUMA
3. Green Dragon
4. Telefónica Blue
5. Delta Lloyd
6. Telefónica Black
7. Ericsson 3
Overall Leaderboard
1. Ericsson 4 (Torben Grael/BRA): 102 points
2. PUMA (Ken Read/USA): 87.0 points
3. Telefónica Blue (Bouwe Bekking/NED): 86.0 points
4. Ericsson 3 (Magnus Olsson/SWE): 64.5 points
5. Green Dragon (Ian Walker/GBR): 59.0 points
6. Telefónica Black (Fernando Echávarri/ESP): 42.0 points
7. Delta Lloyd (Roberto Bermudez/ESP): 35.0 points
8. Team Russia (Andreas Hanakamp/AUT): 10.5 points
Views from the crews...
Ericsson 4 skippered by Torben Grael
We're all very tired," Grael said. "We're a little better now than when we were at Holland. That was the time when we were most tired."
The International crew had an eventful leg, one that saw them clear out the port steering wheel and part of the helmsman's guard rail in a spectacular broach last Saturday, the first night offshore from Galway.
Trimmer Tony Mutter said the crew was pushing hard when a squall came through, and they got caught with too much sail area flying.
"We had about 40 knots," Mutter said. "We tried to persevere. It went well for awhile, but then we wiped out at high speed. There was so much water over the leeward rail. We treated the boat pretty badly, but she got us here."
The crew recouped and led at the Scilly Islands, but then got passed by Green Dragon and Telefónica Black, both farther out in the English Channel and taking advantage of a wind shift.
Ericsson 4 got back into the lead two days later approaching the Rotterdam Loop. Ericsson 4 got to the west of Green Dragon and Telefónica Black and found a building and lifting breeze off the Belgium coastline from a low-pressure system and led the fleet up through the North Sea.
The final 130 miles were a game of covering the competition and Ericsson 4 kept a tight clamp on its competition.
"But this leg was really hard," said bowman Phil Jameson. "On average the guys got two hours sleep, if they were lucky. I reckon we got six hours each for the trip. Everyone's tired and worn out, but thrilled with the results. It was great racing, tight all the way."
Ericsson 3, skippered by Magnus Olsson of Stockholm
The team were disappointed with their seventh place finish.
"It hurts so bad. We're completely disappointed with the leg but happy to be in Marstrand," said Olsson, competing in his sixth Volvo Ocean Race. "We got it a bit wrong. After that we never succeeded to catch up."
Ericsson 3 got stuck on the wrong side of a low pressure system off Belgium and never managed to recover fully however, in the closing stages they did pull within 14 nautical miles of the lead.
"We came back quite well," said navigator Aksel Magdahl. "Today we crossed some tacks with Delta Lloyd and Telefónica Black. But they got into a cloud and disappeared in a second."
"Two hours on the wrong tack ruined the whole leg," said the navigator. "I think it was a combination of being tired and not being alert."
Olsson said the leg was difficult because of the many maneuvers required the ever-changing conditions, and vowed to review the leg to be ready for the next.
"We were there, we just got it wrong," Olsson said. "We're going to talk about it and see if we can understand what happened. It hurts so bad."
Green Dragon, skippered by Ian Walker
“We sailed pretty much a perfect leg, so there’s no point in being upset. This leg, there were a lot of big tactical gains. We sailed a very different route to everyone else in the race. It clearly paid. It was only at the end when we were all straight-line reaching that they all came smoking past us.”
Team Delta Lloyd
"It was very intense, as there were only options related to low pressure areas", reviewed Dutch navigator Wouter Verbraak the eight leg of Galway to Marstrand. "The weather models were useless, so it was about thinking and finding new possibilities. The choice before Rotterdam was between east or west. We chose the right side and picked up some breeze, whereas Ericsson 3 went to the west, which was the direct line. We had to invest in going to the east, but it paid off."
It was blowing along the Dutch coast. Verbraak continues: "We had again to make a decision whether to stay a little longer in that pressure or where to cross the low. It kept us busy until yesterday morning." Verbraak explains how they gained five miles on their way to Denmark: "The front runners set course to the Danish coast, whereas we went already to the north."
PUMA, skippered by Ken Read
“I am so proud of this team, and I give Andrew Cape (AUS) a ton of credit. 24 hours ago we had all the reason to quit in this leg, things looked really bad. The centre of the low had gobbled us up far to the east of where we thought it was, our running kite was destroyed and the fleet was literally sailing away from us; we thought we had really screwed it up. But Capey (Andrew Cape) refused to quit, he said ‘you know what, we can either follow them in or we can try to do something about it’.
“Our Plan B was to sail through a gale to get to the northerly winds that got us back in the fleet…and it worked. We’re a happy, exhausted crew, and I can’t tell you how much they all mean to me. The idea of quitting does not exist in this team. It seems that when something goes wrong, it brings out the best in us. The toll this kind of racing takes on you both physically and mentally is unreal. I can't thank the team enough for their determination and desire. I am very proud of this team. Very proud.”