First home...finally

Another win for ABN AMRO One. James Boyd reports from Melbourne

After a gruelling light wind passage around the eastern perimeter of Port Philip Bay, so ABN AMRO One finally crossed the line off Melbourne at 09:05GMT (20:05 local time) at the end of leg two of the Volvo Ocean Race. It has been a tense few final days for Mike Sanderson's team who have seen their lead once again whittled away as they fell into the clutches of the light winds of a high pressure system allowing ABN AMRO Two to play catch up. Dusk was slowly falling as ABN AMRO One approached the line chased for the last mile by a flotilla of around 100 spectator boats.

In fact ABN AMRO One's official finish time is 20:08:40 AST (09:08:40GMT), making their leg time 18 days, 22 hours, 8 minutes and 40 seconds. Points-wise on the leaderboard they now stand on 29, in the lead and five points clear of ABN AMRO Two. Assuming movistar finishes third, ABN AMRO Two will have a gap of 9.5 points over the Spanish boat holding third place overall.

“The guys have done an amazing job and I am so happy for the whole team," said skipper Mike Sanderson after ABN AMRO One had performed her unique limbo dance to get her mast beneath the Bolte Bridge and then tied up at the marina attached to Melbourne's new giant waterfront development. "An ABN AMRO first and second is huge," Sanderson continued. "It was huge on the first leg and even more so on this one, considering the toughness of the leg. I am really relieved. It has been a very stressful last 18 hours, but that is nothing compared with the leg as a whole. I have never known anything like it."

Sanderson has constantly spoken over the course of this leg about the stress he has been feeling, but compared to the situations of a lot of the skippers in this race who's boats have been breaking, his stress perhaps doesn't warrant great sympathy - being more a case of hanging on to his lead and damage prevention. Saying this, leg two of this Volvo Ocean Race has been a massive game of snakes and ladders and saw ABN AMRO One at one stage pull ahead by up to 390 miles only for this lead to then evaporate to below zero as over one sched ABN AMRO Two edged ahead in terms of distance to finish en route up to the Eclipse scoring waypoint.

A reason for this massive concertinaing becoming a feature of this leg, was mainly the race organisers' decision to keep the course in the lower latitudes by adding two ice waypoint gates, as well as the Eclipse Island waypoint - generally on a course where there was much more opportunity for the boats to experience the light winds associated with high pressure systems. As a result this was not a classic Southern Ocean leg as we have come to know. For example the boats never dipped below 43degS while on previous races they would regularly keep the Kerguelen archipelago to port at 50degS.

If the stress this time was not so much derived from physical hardship it was more mental for ABN AMRO One's skipper. "The physical side is the easy side. The mental ride of the Volvo Ocean Race and the intensity - that is unique in ocean racing," says Sanderson. "The stress was immense from the minute we left Cape Town - basically I worried ever since I left Cape Town. I worried until we crossed the finish. If it wasn’t the other guys breaking, it was our worrying about ourselves breaking, the positions - there was something every day really big. Even yesterday we sailed through a front and the next minute we are leaping off these waves at speed downwind." Some of the tougher decisions were speed police ones, over whether to slow down or not. "The boat is in great shape and we spent a lot of time with the foot off the throttle," he continued. "A couple of times I was worried I’d been a bit too conservative, but it’s paid off."

Sanderson paid tribute to his navigator, PlayStation and Pyewacket veteran, Stan Honey. "He’s there to stop me tearing all my hair out and has done an amazing job. Whenever a sched came through we couldn’t have asked to be in a better position. We were losing but they were going to have to come into our transom if they were going to get past us."

Sanderson also attempted to set the record straight about ABN AMRO Two being the supposed 'B' boat. "This is obviously a massive day for the team and I think everyone was a little bit shocked by the white boat’s result into Cape Town - everyone, that is, except us. We knew we were going to get beaten at some stage by the white boat. Their boat is quick and they did an awesome job and we’ve done a lot of testing to know what to use when. We are ready to be beaten by them, but I’m not certain the rest of the competitors expected to be beaten by the young guys."

Concerning the numerous breakages on the other Volvo 70s, Sanderson reeled out a well rehersed statement, clearly the result of much pondering on this subject: "The world called for grand prix boat, the world got grand prix boat, and now everyone better not complain about it. A fantastic race boat has been delivered here and you make of the rule what you want - it is not anyone elses fault," he warns. "If you go hurtling into the first corner in your Formula One car with your foot on the gas, I guess you’re not going to make it round it. We have got to work out what the pace is you can drive a Volvo 70 at? A few times on this leg I was quite concerned we’d backed off too much. We were losing in the scheds and that is a tough thing to do."

In comparison the ABN AMRO boats appear to have only broken minor things. This is partly the result of learning a lot pre-race such as having had significant keel issues while they were testing mid-Atlantic last summer. "We had a lot of problems early on with the white boat and I think a lot of the guys haven’t had the time on their boats like we have," crewman Dave Endean explains. "Some of them might have been pushing the weight saving too hard. It is going to be the Achilles heel of these boats and it is going to be hard to prevent that without throwing some weight at them and ensuring they are safe. The white boat is probably pretty bulletproof now. It has been a big advantage having that first boat - it has got the same sail plan as us and it is a fast rig. It is going to be hard to slow them down because as soon as they get a bit more confidence, they’ll be off."

Watch leader Brad Jackson gave some insight into how close to the line they have been coming: "We are so close to going that way [the boats that broke] as well. You never know - there are such massive loads on these boats it turns to history so quick. It could be us one of these legs, but we’ll do everything we can to prevent it."

Jackson also points out that on the black boat they were able to back off more than perhaps the other teams, by virtue of their being in front for most of the leg. "Later in the leg the young guys were pushing us and we had to ramp it up again and we had to push the boat hard. It is a bit of a change to have to back off like this, but then you realise you can’t throw them around like you used to and you have to look after things more - both the people and the boat. It had a good work out that’s for sure." Jackson reckons the boats will get to the stage where they are both reliable and can be pushed at some stage, but it is likely that at this point they won't be as light and hi-tech as they presently are.

Another feature of the ABN AMRO One crew has been their new found creativity when it comes to facial hair. Dave Endean, sporting large pork chop side burns explains: "At the ridge before Eclipse everyone started shaving and Sidney [Gavignet] got the idea we should start cutting in some facial activity for a bit of a laugh. Things were getting a bit tedious on board, so it was something different." Brad Jackson meanwhile was touting the beginnings of a fine Frank Zappa.

Unlike some of the other teams, Sanderson confirms that they will not be making much in the way of change to ABN AMRO One during this stopover. "We are very happy with our boat. It is our baby, it has done us proud. It has looked after us better than we have looked after it."

However a job list there is and this will involve re-righting some of the running repairs made during the leg. "Anything I’ve touched we need to grind off and re-repair," quips Dave Endean. "We have the solent tack fitting - the chain plate down below and a sheave box on deck. We have got some small longitudinal repairs due to slamming problems. The nav station hasn’t fallen apart, but we have a different nav station with a few moving parts and some of the panels are moving a bit further than they are supposed to..."

There is also the heads to be repaired after, as the culprit Brian Thompson puts it, he came in through the door and left through the side wall... "We pushed the weight saving to the maximum," explains Endean. "So the panels were attached in such a way that if you put load on the panel, the panel wouldn’t break, it would just fall off its mounts. We’ve all grown up with the boat knowing this. Unfortunately Brian didn’t and put a bit too much load on it and fell right through. Fortunately he didn’t injure himself."

To see video of their arrival - click here



More photos on the following pages...