The ABN One express train

Mike Sanderson's team puts further miles on the Volvo Open 70s

Positions at 0400GMT

Pos	Yacht	Skipper	Latitude	Longitude	DTF	CMG	SMG	DTL	DTLC
1	ABN AMRO One	Mike Sanderson	13 23.81N	030 19.97W	4401	173	17.2	0	0
2	Brasil 1	Torben Grael	14 21.78N	029 44.34W	4464	177	14.9	63	-14
3	ABN AMRO Two	Seb Josse	14 31.59N	030 22.48W	4468	172	14.7	67	-15
4	Ericsson	Neal McDonald	14 32.68N	029 58.68W	4472	174	15.3	71	-11
5	Sunergy	Grant Wharington	26 07.20N	026 12.44W	5193	185	8.3	792	-51
6	movistar	Bouwe Bekking	37 07.64N	008 31.80W	6157	0	0	1756	-101
7	Pirates	Paul Cayard	38 41.54N	009 24.95W	6213	0	0	1812	-101

Overnight the four Volvo Ocean Race leaders have continued to ride the trade winds south, and have now pass the latitude of the Cape Verdes. But the most significant change in the last 12 hours is that ABN AMRO One has further extended their lead over the chasing trio - from 35 miles yesterday afternoon to 63 miles this morning. Mike Sanderson explains more about how this has come to pass in his email below. On the ABN AMRO payroll is legendary round the world race navigator Mike Quilter, who was on board not only Peter Blake's all-conquering Steinlager II in 1989/90 but Grant Dalton's winning maxi New Zealand Endeavour four years later and was also on board Club Med with Dalts when she won The Race in 2001. Whereas most navigators these days will gather as much weather information as possible and churn through this before deciding upon a strategy, Quilter's approach to the round the world race course is much simpler and this involves sticking to what Quilter describes as 'the plan', the statistically most favourable route round the planet. As Quilter's track record has proven this approach more often than not works.

As we mentioned yesterday the boats are currently lining up for the Doldrums crossing. The boats seem to be lining up for a crossing at around 30°W where the latest satellite images shows there to be very little Doldrums activity. However this can change very rapidly. With the Doldrums area starting at around 8°N this is still 318 miles away for ABN AMRO One, which if she maintains her present average speed of 16.9 knots she will reach at 2200GMT tonight. If she does get caught in the Doldrums then there is likely to be some compression of the fleet overnight.

Mike Sanderson writes: Today has been pay back day for our pre-race plan of setting ourselves up to the West of the fleet, ever since we started working on this Leg in March with Mike Quilter and Ken Campbell, Mike has been drilling Stan (Honey – navigator) and I about 'The Road' - the place where he wanted us to go out to before we gybed to head down the Atlantic.

Of course this hasn’t been looking good on the scheds that are based on the gate mark at Fernando, because at times we have been sailing as far off course as 80 degrees, but over the past five or six scheds, now that were on the road, we have made some awesome gains and now hold a 30 mile lead over Brazil One.

It’s a relief that this has panned out as sailing so far off course and letting your competitors get that much closer to the mark is normally a big no no, as it is still weather that we are dealing with and it can always change. It was funny at the weather de-brief that Stan gave the crew when we were in Sanxenxo; we talked there about what the plan was and I know that some of the younger guys must have seriously wondered what we where thinking….. We’re going to do what??? Based on it working on Steinlager 2 and NZ Endeavour ???? You have got to be kidding!!! That happened in the late 80s and early 90s surely we have got better technology then that…, but the fact of the matter is that Stan did have all the technology backing it up as well. It is just so hard to see your competitors get as much as 40 miles closer to the mark, while we looked like we where heading for Miami.

Stan is the Man though…. Cool as a cucumber, he is working very long hours analysing weather and also working on analysis of not only our boats performance but also the guys around us, so far our 10 months working together has been an absolute pleasure, and I am very much looking forward to the months of racing ahead..

Now back to today, the guys have got the boat just 'on fire' and not literally this time, we are seeing speeds up to 25 knots in just 17 knots of wind, most of the time on a fractional gennaker, staysail and full mainsail. Life on board is good, the boat is now dry downstairs which is just a massive bonus, we have given ourselves for this leg four little
plastic fans, and just by getting a little circulation running it seems to not only get rid of the smell of Crusty’s feet but also dry the boat out nicely.

Anyway, that’s about it from me for today, just going to go back and enjoy the sailing, if Juan (Koujoumjian – the designer of the two ABN AMRO boats) was here right now, I would probably hug him. His creation is just a pleasure.

I also just want to say a big Thanks to My Mum Geraldine Sanderson, she came all the way too Europe from New Zealand to be there with me for the start, it was awesome to have you there, and the very special Maori greenstone carving that she gave me to wear to symbolise my team and me circling the globe and returning safely…. Thanks Mum…


Neal McDonald's Ericsson has dropped to fourth place. On board navigator Steve Hayles describes life on board:

It's about 2100 ship’s time on day six and everything has a very familiar feeling to it. The boat is pitch black inside apart from the nav station where the two computer screens and countless other displays have been put on their dim settings and I have switched to the red lighting to try and save my night vision. I can hear the muffled voices of the guys on deck calling for trim changes to be made to the sails and the big mainsheet winch system which is about six inches from my head suddenly starts whirring.

The only other sound apart from the water rushing past the hull is the whirring of the watermaker which is busy turning sea water into fresh water, something we do twice a day to make sure that we don't carry too much extra weight for any longer than necessary.

That’s not to say that there isn't plenty of completely necessary equipment on board and if you were sat here in the nav station with me you could see just how much there was. Extra weight in the middle of the boat is bad but correctly placed it can help our performance.

On one side there is a mountain of equipment and people in their bunks. A place for everything and everything in its place; the 20 day bags of food neatly stacked, four people in matching tee shirts and shorts, charts, tools, spares, personal bags, foul weather gear and just about everything we are allowed to move is crammed as far outboard as we can get it to help give us more stability and therefore more speed.

On the other side of the boat there is the square root of nothing; however small the item it's important to get it to the weather side. That’s all great of course until you tack or gybe when the process of moving everything and restacking it starts all over again. There's 100s of kilograms of food and equipment and that’s without another 700kgs of
sails on deck that need moving as well.

If it’s not from side to side we often move things forward and backwards. A small change in the wind speed and we need to start hauling the stuff around. It's hard work at times and very frustrating having to dig out a sail that was placed at the bottom of the stack some days ago when conditions where different.

In truth though, this evening its very easy going, medium winds, warm water and fairly clear sky. It’s important to catch up on sleep in these situations as we know that we are going to lose out at other times. Work hard when you are awake and sleep hard when you are not!

I’m off to the galley now to grab a cup of water before it all disappears; which in itself is not as easy as it sounds. I could easily get there on the leeward side but I would get a few dirty looks for being on the 'wrong side' so I am going to crawl around in the dark over the tools and wet clothing with my night vision ruined from looking at this computer screen and try not to cut myself again on the winch system or bash my head again on the bulkhead like I seem to most of the countless trips I make every night to and from the nav station.

Its a fairly simple life out here and the rules are clear; it might be a little basic and uncomfortable but the feeling you get from everyone doing everything possible to pull together for one simple common goal is hard to find anywhere else.


Bring up the rear - ignoring Pirates and movistar who are sorting out their major technical issues back in Portugal - is Brunel Sunergy. Navigator Campbell Field sends this:

Just had the discussion on deck, what are we going to talk about in our daily email off the boat. After a few seconds, a useful list developed...

1. The competition: they are making great progress towards Fernando, reaching along a lot faster than we are. The four leaders are making almost 100nm per 6 hour period (6 hours Earth time is one day racing time as far as we are concerned...we get an update on positions for the rest of the fleet at 0400, 1000, 1600 and 2200). We have been watching closely the relative performance of each boat, trying to assess their strong points for future reference, and ABN AMRO One seems to be revealing theirs. This
discussion stretches to techniques of sailing the boat, sails and what conditions they have been optimised for, hull forms, foil configurations etc.

2. Our performance: we have not had the luxury of a lot of sailing before this race to test different methods of sailing in a wide variety of conditions, and today lent itself to some good testing. Testing is essentially sailing along for 15 minutes or so with a fixed 'set-up', and data logging all the performance parameters. We tested with changes such
as sailing with different keel angles, sailing at different wind angles, changing trim by moving weight forward and back in the boat (one of the quick tests of this was to get everyone to walk to the bow of the boat and stay there for a couple of minutes, then come to the back of the boat... of course not an ideal test, but broke the routine a bit!).
We learnt a great deal out of these exercises, it is amazing how subtle changes can make small differences to performance that over time add up to many, many miles. We use software to compare the performance of each test to our base 'polar' model, and can very quickly gain a picture of how each configuration compares on a percentage basis either in pure boatspeed, or in VMG terms.
3. Maintenance day today too. Our bowman, the baby of the fleet 'Becksy' took a trip up
the mast to swap a halyard over and check that everything was in order. A rope splicing fest was conducted downstairs and in the cockpit making spares for the days ahead in case any of our strops, sheets or halyards suffered from chafe.

Just returned from a 'discussion' on deck, with Skipper Grant (Wharington) and Scotty (Jeff Scott) as were are starting to line ourselves up for the run down the trades...gybe too early and we will be flat running the whole way down, gybe at the right time and we will be slightly pressed and sailing fast south for 900nm, gybe too late, and we will have sailed unnecessary extra miles while the guys ahead extend on us. In the end a significant windshift from a local cloud dictated that we must gybe. We may well be gybing back in the next hour or so.

A very intense period for the next 18 to 24 hours to see how it shakes out!

Better get back to work on the weather, and see where we are heading. More tomorrow.
Good night to all,
Campbell