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ABN AMRO One scores fourth leg victory

Today at 1857 GMT, 1457 local, after 15 days, 2 hours, 47 minutes and 52 seconds, skipper Mike Sanderson steered ABN AMRO One, the Dutch yacht affectionately known as ‘Black Betty’, under the Annapolis Bridge and across the finish line south east of Sandy Point, 18 nautical miles from Baltimore’s Inner Harbor, to add another leg win to their tally of three wins and a second place in the Volvo Ocean Race so far.

Finishing in almost drifting conditions, at one point having us a kedge anchor to prevent the boat drifting backwards on the outgoing tide, Mike Sanderson was relieved to have kept the lead from movistar who was challenging them right to the very end.

“It is awesome to have won this leg,” said Sanderson after crossing the finish line. “The conditions in the Bay have not been fast, but we have been through a lot of different weather systems on this leg and it is incredible that we have got through them all and are here in first place.

“Once again the boys have done a fantastic job - I am always happy but today I am more than happy and I am very proud to be part of this team. It is a great day for us and I am looking forward to getting onto dry land here in America.

“It was a good leg to win. The boat was going great and we had to dig our way back from last position but we had an amazing ambience onboard. It was a lot like the in-port race in Rio - we left the dock in good spirits. We had our problem breaking a jib lock in Rio but we were not flustered by it and we just got on with it.

“At one stage at the end of the second day we just had to say hey our plan isn’t working, we are not addressing these clouds properly, lets just be straight up with each other and say okay how are we going to do it differently because we have to get our act together and get ourselves back on the front row of the grid.

“For me the first leg win and the last leg were the two wins I enjoyed most. The first leg for me was huge because the pressure of knowing that at least we were going to compete in this Volvo Ocean Race was over because we have lived with that since day dot and the last leg because this boat was always going to be aggressive down South. It is designed for reaching speed and it was always going to be a handful in the Southern Ocean. To be able to be on the pace and in fact lead through the Southern Ocean, to be first round Cape Horn, and then hang on in the conditions up South America was very exciting.

“This leg I thought this is what the boat is designed for. We didn’t get as much of it as we hoped but we managed to hang on in the light which was great.”

“Of course we can be beaten. Between here and New York if we get all light airs we are going to come last. Certainly our Achilles heel is going to be the short legs. We just need to keep it in one piece, keep in some breeze and keep doing what we are doing. We need to keep trying to earn points as we need more points yet if we are going to win this race.”

ABN AMRO One's American navigator Stan Honey added: “It feels great. It’s a real treat being back and it feels very familiar. It was mostly just fear as we sailed up the Chesapeake. I have sailed enough times up the Chesapeake to know what it can do and it did exactly what it normally does.

“We were quite scared that movistar would do what they did to us in Wellington so we did not look back and nobody talked about it. It was a very challenging trip. There were a lot of different weather patterns on this leg and so there were about 25 different decisions we had to make but luckily it worked out well enough.

“In a lot of way navigationally the Southern Ocean legs are the easiest. This particular Volvo Ocean Race they made it harder with the ice waypoints, but the thing that is toughest is passing through weather systems. The legs that go north and south through the Atlantic are some of the most challenging as you go from the westerlies to the Horse Latitudes to the trades to the doldrums and then in the next hemisphere back again. So that’s the kind of thing that makes it very tough. It is a big relief to have won this leg.”

ABN AMRO One set the pace on day two of leg five from Rio de Janeiro to Baltimore, but was overtaken the following day by Spain’s movistar with Bouwe Bekking in charge. Positions in the fleet then changed almost on an hourly basis, with ABN AMRO One sinking as low as fourth before slowly reeling in the fleet and challenging movistar as they approached the scoring gate at Fernando de Noronha on day five.

movistar led ABN AMRO One around the island by one minute 25 seconds, scoring three points, after six days of difficult and often frustrating conditions. Sanderson and his team then rolled over the top of movistar almost immediately to take the lead which they maintained right up to the finish.

ABN AMRO One heads the overall leaderboard with 62.5 points, 22 points ahead of movistar in second position overall, who was just 17 miles behind ABN AMRO One when she crossed the finish line.