Norwegians come good

Knut Frostad gives his reaction to their welcome second place on this leg

On the dockside in Rio de Janeiro at the end of the fourth and most event filled legs so far in the Volvo Ocean Race, djuice dragon skipper Knut Frostad gave his reaction to their much welcome second-placed finish.

Q: You said in Auckland that you would come back. How does it feel?

Knut Frostad: It feels great. I don't think a second place has felt better, ever. It was a tough leg. From the Horn we sailed fast and in the right place. It was awesome.

Q: What have the last few days been like?

KF: If you have been stressed watching us, imagine how it has been on board. Unbelievable. 12 hours ago there were three miles between second and fifth place. We made a pretty good call to gybe later than the other guys to stay nearer to the shore and realising that nobody else wanted to do it. I don't think I slept at all during the last 30 hours. But it's been great.

Q: How did you pull it off?

KF: To start with we had very good light air speed. We were much faster than Assa and Tyco. Our navigator is an awesome guy, his prediction was spot on and he said to me "Knut, I don't have a clue whether it's going to go wrong, but all my instincts say, go to the land, because if something's going to come good, it will come from the land, and we did it. We had the guts and we had everything to win and nothing to lose. And it happened! It's great.

Q: It must have been very stressful.

KF: It was horrible. Especially when we went into the beach on the last gybe which we did to gain more wind and at first we had two knots less than the other guys, and I thought, 'shit, this is it, we blew it'. But we just hung in their a little bit more and the wind slowly started to come back. We lost one, gained one, lost one, gained one. It was fantastic.

Q: Can you give us any idea of what it is like on board under those conditions?

KF: Just one loud word from the nav station and the whole team that is asleep will wake up. We kept cool and calm. It was awesome. It was such an anti-climax to the Southern Ocean - I can't believe it after what we have gone through in the Southern Ocean and now we are only a few miles apart.

Q: What was the Southern Ocean like?

KF: It was a real Southern Ocean leg. It was the most awesome leg I have seen in my life. Scary, awesome sailing. Icebergs are fantastic to watch in daylight but they're pretty horrible at night. I said a few times to myself to never do this again but it was fantastic. The Southern Ocean was exactly what it should be and more, maybe a little too much.

We had great sailing, the spinnaker up all the time, never ran out of wind and, apart from the icebergs, it was fantastic. A couple of icebergs are alright, but not 40 like we saw this time.

Q: How difficult it to push in those conditions?

KF: The worst thing is you get used to it and I was quite scared realising after four days that we started getting used to sailing in between icebergs and not being so scared anymore. But for me, personally, it was hard and I couldn't sleep a second at night in case the guy in the nav station, or whoever was watching the radar fell asleep or something. I think there were six or seven times when we really had to change course to not crash through an iceberg and when you are doing 25 knots, that's pretty hairy sailing. But it was fantastic sailing, it was beautiful. The spinnaker up the whole way going 25 knots, it was fantastic.

Q: How important is it for Djuice to come second?

KF: Oh very important, it's such an important inspiration for our team. We have an awesome team who has been working so hard for so long for this race and it has been an uphill battle ever since the start. We had an okay second leg but it was uphill on the first and third leg and we just kept working and kept working and kept believing and kept the spirit up and the crew deserve it. They just deserve it, all of them.

Q: Has your recent sail testing in Auckland paid off?

KF: We worked in Sydney and Auckland on our light air speeds and during the last 36 hours that paid off enormously. We were really fast in light airs and so I am very happy with all that. We have to work a lot on our reaching speeds, we still lost a lot out of Auckland on our reaching and we have a long way to go there and we are going to work on that here in Rio as well. It is great to see that it pays off and I am very happy.

Q: How do you feel mentally and physically?

KF: I haven't slept for 36 hours but I am pretty happy!

Blasting through the Southern Ocean...