Champagne yachting

An elated Jamie Gale reports from the Volvo race leader illbruck

The green machine keeps rolling along! Now that we have cleared the Doldrums we are enjoying some champagne yachting, reaching in 15-20kts of wind around 110TWA.

The heat that was so oppressive last week has relented somewhat, and even a few tropical rain showers at night have the positive effect of washing a little of the salt off one's brow! Fortunately for us, illbruck excels in these conditions and we are slowly building a small lead.

So far the boat is performing beautifully and the crew (apart from a little gunwhale bum!) are in good health and high spirits. There is nothing like a few good skeds to put smiles on tired faces. Even Nitro (recently inducted into Neptune's realm at the equator in what looked like an extremely painful ceremony) is starting to come around.

Obviously we are delighted to be in this position. Our biggest fear prior to this leg was to be caught out by a couple of nasty rain clouds in the Doldrums and get totally dropped by the leaders as half the fleet has been. It must be very painful for the tail-enders to sit in the Doldrums going nowhere fast watching as the lead boats escape into the NE Trades and disappear well over the horizon.

As the Trade winds extend almost to the finish it is unlikely there will be any major passing lanes or opportunities to make significant gains. Hence our fear of getting behind, and hence our satisfaction for avoiding this.

illbruck is not at her best relative to some of the other boats in the lighter conditions so we had to work even harder than normal to match Tyco and Assa. The thinking was that if we could get through the light air (our weakest area) and across the Equator within sight of the two other boats in the leading group then we should have the pace to pass them on the reach to Barbuda when the conditions were expected to be more to our liking. So we pleasantly surprised ourselves a little by actually leading the fleet out of the light air and into the northern hemisphere.

One of the main reasons for this our primary navigator Juan Vila.

Working in tandem with our skipper JK, Juan is one of the people you don't hear too much about on a day to day basis. Usually in yacht racing the only time you hear the navigator's name mentioned is when 'he' has a shocker and the boat loses out badly!

It's a case of the age old maxim - when the boat does well the crew sailed well but when the boat does badly the navigator messed it up! So the fact that Juan's name doesn't come up too much is a sure sign that he is right on the money. The last week has been very tough for Juan. No sooner does his head touch the pillow after a 12 hour watch than we haul him up on deck to get his opinion on the next cloud, what side of it we should try to go and how much breeze we can expect from it, and if you don't mind, from what direction exactly?

Juan's the guy who sleeps in his drytop and boots because he knows he is only a call on the intercom away from being back on deck. On top of that, he has to answer the same questions four times as each watch comes and goes! How did we do in the last sked? What is the bearing to Assa and Tyco? Is it going to rain on the next watch? Are the girls still ahead of Dalts? Personally I think Juan is one of the main reasons that we did so well through the Doldrums, and now that we are in the steadier trades, we are making an effort to let him sleep for at least 30 minutes at a time. Fingers crossed that Juan's name will continue to not make too many headlines...

The best news is that we are expecting a quick trip the rest of the way. Although this is not the longest leg, the boys are all looking forward to a shower and some clean clothes. I can promise you that you would not want to be involved with the laundry industry in Miami!

Jamie Gale
illbruck Challenge