Three point lead

illbruck Watch Captain Stu Bannatyne looks at how the Volvo Ocean Race may pan out

Stu Bannatyne at the helm

The third leg of the Volvo Ocean Race has produced plenty of discussion about many different things, but probably given the most airtime is whether or not
the Sydney-Hobart Race should have been included as an integral part of the Volvo Race.

Personally I think not. The Volvo Race is a great race and so is the Sydney-Hobart, in fact it is widely recognised as one of the two premier offshore races in the world along with the Fastnet. Neither race needs the other and I think it was a mistake to combine them.

There was never full agreement between the two organising authorities and as a result we, the Volvo boats, were racing under a different set of rules for the first
part of our leg 3, a highly undesirable and unnecessary situation. A few protests resulted on technical infringements of sailing instructions caused by the confusion, wasting everyone's time, competitors and juries. I hope this experiment of trying to combine two high profile races is not attempted again. The sport does not need it.

There are many theories being thrown around about why illbruck did not win leg 3 and what went wrong? We had a good hard look at ourselves in our normal post leg debrief and came up with a few things we can improve on.

There are a couple of areas where we think we can improve but certainly no radical changes are planned. A quick summary of the race will show that we led for most of the way to Hobart, until a dying breeze brought the fleet back together. Dalts can count himself very lucky again that a park up in front has enabled him to get back into the race, maybe his Frers boat is a little more off the pace than he thinks?

Being in slightly the wrong place and an ill-timed collision with weed meant we were just off the pace when the breeze filled in again on Storm Bay so we trailed the other five Volvo boats into Hobart.

A few hours into the race after a nice restart in the Derwent and we had powered past News Corp and djuice and had the others in our sights. It was about here that the north started to pay and Dalts and Assa slipped away. Meanwhile we were having a great race that lasted all the way to finish line with Tyco and News Corp in all sorts of conditions, proving yet again how close this race has been and will continue to be right up until the finish in Kiel.

Unfortunately for the three of us there were no more park ups to bring us into contention for the lead!