Into the Roaring Forties

ABN AMRO boats lead the charge south

Positions at 1600GMT

Pos	Yacht	Skipper	Latitude	Longitude	SMG	CMG	DTF	DTL	DTLC
1	movistar	Bouwe Bekking	38 56.53S	23 38.04E	10.1	170	5703	0	0
2	Brasil 1	Torben Grael	38 11.40S	22 47.22E	10.8	36	5754	51	-9
3	Pirates of the Caribbean	Paul Cayard	40 06.27S	21 59.51E	6.8	188	5757	54	-24
4	ABN AMRO ONE	Mike Sanderson	40 14.53S	21 46.30E	6.3	203	5765	62	-35
5	ABN AMRO TWO	Seb Josse	40 17.49S	21 33.27E	7	190	5774	71	-26
6	ING Real Estate Brunel	Grant Wharington	40 07.12S	21 09.45E	8.4	204	5794	91	-37
7	Ericsson Racing Team	Neal McDonald	35 36.40S	21 24.10E	10.9	24	5875	172	-29

Readers will be pleased to hear that after this morning's drama no further boats have retired from the Volvo Ocean Race between the last sched and the latest one at 1600. Five out of seven boats are still racing, oddly the same number as there two days into the first leg.

After a heinous night upwind, this afternoon has seen the boats back to sailing in single figure wind speeds as they negotate a ridge blocking their path to the stronger westerlies to the south. This lack of wind speed has coincided with the four front runners in the flight south entering the Roaring Forties with perhaps more of a wimper than a roar.

ABN AMRO Two, as the most southwesterly boat, is likely to be first to break into the westerlies and start making the turn east. "It has been good to be out to the west and it has given us the opportunity to get a bit of pressure first," commented navigator Simon Fisher earlier. "Whether we are far enough west to make a substantial difference I’m not sure. The black boat did very well on us in the last sched because we ran out of breeze in a cloud and had to put a tack in and that got them a bit further south."

A late player in attempting the westerly strategy has been Grant Wharington's ING Real Estate Brunel which earlier this morning tacked off to starboard crossing tracks with ABN AMRO Two, sailing a deeper angle.

Generally the crews on the remaining boats are thanking their lucky stars they have made it through this first challenging patch of the second leg and now the wind has gone light are able to get some order back into their stomaches. "Yesterday afternoon and evening was absolutely heinous, in terms of pounding upwind," recounted Simon Fisher. "It took its toll on the boat and the crew. Most people bounced their dinner. So it was pretty unpleasant and it was really hot downstairs which didn’t help matters. But we have got through that and it is a bit lighter now."

Fisher says that last night it was not the 25-26 knot winds that were the problem, it was the sea. "It was quite short and sharp and had us launching off every other wave and coming down with an almighty bang." As a result of this they chose to back off. "We pulled up a bit of daggerboard yesterday because we didn’t want to smash the boat up. It might have cost us a couple of miles on the water but we thought in terms of longevity it was a good idea."

News of the plight of first Ericsson and then Brazil 1, who they had been sailing next to for the last 24 hours, prompted ABN AMRO Two boat captain Nick Bice to carry out a thorough on board check - fortunately finding nothing of consequence.

Unfortunately Mike Sanderson's team on ABN AMRO One have not been so lucky. Prior to passing the Cape of Good Hope they managed to wrap some kelp around one of their many appendages (the Juan K boats have five in total) but it took them a while to figure out this to be the case. "We couldn’t work it out," admitted Moose. "We had awesome speed in the in-port when we’d lined up with everyone, and yet we were just okay." They prised the kelp off yesterday morning and subsequently demonstrated the benefits of high stability and enormous daggerboards by burned past the Pirates and then Ericsson.

Last night more serious damage befell them when the structure broke inside the bow securing the tierod for the tack of the Solent jib.The tack of the Solent sits neatly inside a small well in the deck. This well is separate unit from the deck and is kept from popping out of the deck by the tierod, in turn lashed to a load bearing athwartships tube down below. It was this tube that broke causing the well to pop out of the deck. "To start with we thought the whole structure had failed and the Solent tack fitting was going to be out for the whole leg but in fact the tube had just collapsed," Mike Sanderson admitted. Fortunately the well popped out of the deck in on piece and it was simply a case of rebuilding the structural tube and rejoining the tierod. "Dave Endean and Jan [Dekker] have done an awesome job and put it back together today and it is going to be stronger than it ever was."

With a hole in the deck while regularly planting the bow into the waves sailing upwind last night, a fairly large quantity of water was making its way into the bow. "We were bailing out half a dozen buckets of water every 30 minutes in the bow," commented Sanderson. "The watertight door we kept that shut and you’d open the door and be met by this massive slosh of waves. The first time I did it without my dry suit top on and after that it was almost a full Southern Ocean kit before you opened the door..."

Despite these problems the team have been exceptionally lucky to be able to keep the pace on and have bearly missed a beat. "It was always going to be a matter of toughing out," says Sanderson. "I have always said this leg will have quite a few potential restarts in it. As far as I am concerned we need to make sure we have still got a racing yacht at Eclipse Island so we can fight the last fight, so it will be interesting to see how it pans out over the next two weeks."

Moose reckons last night they were heading upwind into 25 knots with possibly 30 in the puffs under reefed main and no4 jib, conditions they have much experience of and a positive walk in the park compared to what he personally experienced in the 2004 Transat. "It is pretty violent. The boat has a strange lurching feeling. These things are so light and are creating so much horsepower and you have a 6 tonnes bulb sticking out that has its own momentum and inertia making for a twisting aggressive motion." However he says the ride upwind is far from the worst they have experienced on board. "Our boats tend to land pretty nicely if they are tipped over. Juan [Kouyoumdjian, the designer] has done a really nice job in softening up the shape, so we don’t pound very hard at all, but that puts huge load on the daggerboards which you feel. As an example: we designed the daggerboards so that the boat can be launched out of a wave at 15 knots and fall 3m onto the daggerboard - that was our structural criteria. Last night we were often seeing 13 knots and doing some pretty big jumps..."

Having scared the hell out of everyone by taking a northeasterly route close to the great circle, movistar appear to have bailed from this strategy and are joining the party in the south. Nominally they continue to lead in the official results, but this is nonsense given that everyone is racing south or southeast at present. While movistar are making fast progress south compared to the rest of the fleet and thus will gain ground in the short term they look set to lose it again when they too will have to tackle the ridge. By this time - tomorrow morning - the southerly boats will be fully launched into the westerlies.

Once out of the ridge tonight the wind should continue to veer from the southwest to the west and build. It will then be pedal to the metal in record breaking conditions. "We’ll get into the downwind breeze and do a bit on starboard before we gybe just to make sure we are in lots of breeze," says Simon Fisher. "Obviously we don’t need to go chasing 40 knots like the mighty days of IOR. We don’t need to go too far south. As soon as we are comfortable in 25 that would be good for us." Sanderson agrees that the problem then will become trying to avoid too much wind. "With these boats you seem to spend you whole time with too much or not enough. Very quickly they are overpowered so when there’s nothing it is like any boat there is some it very quickly becomes too much."

Meanwhile the two boats currently heading north have changed course. We understand Ericsson is heading for Mossel Bay, while Brazil 1 is heading for the larger Port Elizabeth.