illbruck and Amer fight to the finish

Ed Gorman reports from Cape Town on a leg from which it is dangerous to draw conclusions

It was a windy and dark Cape Town that welcomed the first two boats in the Volvo Ocean Race. Although Volvo has done a lot more to promote the event in South Africa than Whitbread ever did, there were still only a few hundred people - few of them locals - who turned out to watch John Kostecki and the crew of Illbruck come alongside.

Talking to Kostecki, one of his navigators Ian Moore and then later to Grant Dalton, skipper of Amer Sports One, the clear impression one got is that the first leg is almost certainly going to prove a misleading indicator in terms of how the rest of the nine-stage race will develop.

The meteorological options after the leading boats rounded the island waypoint of Trindade off the Brazilian coast were unclear and very difficult to unravel, and yet proved decisive and all three men used the word "luck" to describe what happened.

With some weather models suggesting east was best for breeze, Illbruck initially went that way but then bailed out quickly enough to recover when it turned soft - a key move for them. Amer Sports One went south immediately - something Dalton has ascribed to gut-instinct and experience - a move which propelled him from fifth to first and secured his runner's-up spot in the leg overall. Behind him Assa Abloy went east and got crucified, Tyco did a little better but both those boats can consider themselves unlucky at that point.

Dalton, assessing his own chances and those of the rest of the fleet, seemed happy to acknowledge that second place in Cape Town could be an unreliable result for Amer Sports One. He said the real fleet ranking was the one in force before the Trindade lottery when Illbruck led from Assa in second, then Tyco, News Corp and Amer in fifth.





The nagging worry however is that while Amer Sports One may be fortunate to finish second here, it is hard to make the same argument for Illbruck which, in every sense, looks ominously strong. While Dalton made a big move at Trindade, Illbruck had been leading for most of the way until that point and, in the end, she ground Amer Sports One down in the power-reaching to South Africa to re-establish her dominance.

At the dockside, Illbruck looked about as immaculate as she did when she left Southampton. Kostecki claimed that his crew had not broken a single sail - the sowing machine was never disturbed - and there were no gear failures on the boat. The only potentially major problem they had was when the SatCom B unit came off its mountings in the bow as the boat was beating down the Spanish coast, threatening illbruck's Internet access. But running repairs proved adequate.

Kostecki is supposed to be labouring under the weight of favouritism - condemned to win as the out-and-out favrourite - but the man looked and sounded dangerously relaxed. "This is a yacht race," he said, "and we are out to win it and whether we are favourites or not makes no difference." He does not look much like Paul Cayard but he sounds a bit like him in the way he analyses and assesses and there was a slight feeling of deja vu about it - had we not seen this before somewhere?





But one of the key differences between Cayard and EF Language at this stage in the last race and illbruck, is that Cayard was first into Cape Town but then went on to make a horlicks of the Southern Ocean leg to Fremantle. (Cayard being Cayard, he was clever enough to recover in the subsequent Southern Ocean stage). Kostecki, by contrast, is well set up for the next leg. He and his crew are alone among the seven syndicates in having trained in the Southern Ocean and they have no illusions about what lies in store.

In the final stages of leg one we saw just what a slick operation illbruck is in the breeze. While Dalton's inexperienced crew - in Volvo terms - trashed two kites and laboured under further problems at the masthead, illbruck methodically reeled them in, in an impressive display of heavy air ocean racing.

Kostecki claimed he had a "long list" of modifications and improvements to make in Cape Town, implying things are not quite as in control as they seem. But Glenn Bourke, the syndicate project manager who was on hand to welcome the boat home, put it more realistically when he said it was all "small stuff". Bourke is a perfectionist and he was impressed. "I thought they sailed almost a tactically perfect race - I didn't see any mistakes. When they went round Trindade and Dalton got the jump on them, what they did was really safe - conservative at the time. When they made a loss, they stuck to it like glue showing real character and then they just ground (Dalton) down," he said.



While Kostecki disclosed he will be making changes in his crew for the next leg, Dalton said he had none planned "at this stage". The implication being that, as in other Dalton-run campaigns, changes further down the line are possible. Kostecki is a quiet and reserved individual who gives little away about his own campaign or his opinions on those of his rivals. Dalton, by contrast, loves to stir it up either through his e-mails from Amer Sports One or with the media at stopovers.

On the dock at the Victoria and Alfred Waterfront he repeated his amazement at what he implied was the tactical idiocy of Gunnar Krantz's SEB when going east of the pack early on and hanging out there, only to make huge losses. Dalts regards this as corner-banging by Krantz and his navigator of the worst sort i.e. taking a high risk option when none was necessary.