On board Ericsson

Neal McDonald speaks to thedailysail about the progress towards Cape Horn

Aside from concern over why their Farr boat, by all accounts a sistership to Pirates of the Caribbean and Brasil 1 has dropped to sixth place, talk on board Ericsson is still over their phenomenal Chinese gybe ( click here to listen to Neal McDonald recount this).

At this morning's 1000 sched Ericsson had slipped back into sixth place overtaken by ABN AMRO Two to their north. "We haven’t found our feet this leg to be honest," admits Neal McDonald. "The first four or five days out of Wellington, we felt pretty comfortable, in fact the closest to racing this fleet has had I thought. Daily we had three or four boats in visual and it was very evenly matched and we felt very good there. Since then we just really haven’t quite got our feet and we seem to have lost out on most of the legs. We threw away 30-40 miles with our capsize, but we’ve lost a lot more than that. We know there is a long way to go and we are battling to get back into it and we see plenty of opportunity down the road. So it hasn’t been a fabulous leg for us so far."

In the big reaching and running conditions the boats are currently experiencing for some reason Ericsson just doesn't seem to have the power. Every sched at present she seems to be losing miles and this is odd as she is believed to have the biggest bulb of all the Farr boats, although this may no longer be the case since she opted to make the change to stainless steel rams in Melbourne.

If Ericsson's hull is the same as Brasil and Pirates of the Caribbean and the boat has a hugely experienced crew as it does, then it is perhaps safe to assume that the major problem lies with Ericsson's sail wardrobe. McDonald agrees: "It might be that we are not set up right, but I don’t think that is it. I think it is more a sail issue. We are still learning as we go along. In retrospect missing the previous Southern Ocean leg has probably been more expensive that I’d anticipated. I think the other guys learned a great deal from that. We are better now than we were at the beginning of this leg. We have certainly learned a lot more about the sails we’ve got for sure."

Aside from blowing up a spinnaker earlier in the leg which David 'Dingo' Rolfe put back together the boat is fine. Which is surprising given the hammering they have been taking. "They do take a pounding. It is just unbelievable. Sitting here now everything is moving. I can feel it all moving around me. We are just going down a wave now at 28 knots, the whole boat is juddering and jumping around and you think - how long will it last like this and it has been like this for two weeks so far!" As we speak the waves are organised says McDonald, but they are not lined up with the wind.

At present the ride is an exciting one, possibly too exciting. "We are more headed than we thought we’d be," says McDonald. Meanwhile Ericsson hurtles through the ocean with peak speeds of 27-30 knots in the pitch black under staysail, J3 (jib top) and one reef in the main with Magnus Woxen on the helm, Richard Mason and Tim Powell also on deck. "We're quietly pootling along at an average of 22 knots," says McDonald. Two hours earlier they had dropped the kite. Now under jib top they can afford to floor it. "With the chute up I felt we were a bit on the edge. With the jib up you have a bit more leeway and you can push it harder so now we are just sending it - it is quite good fun!"

With the big conditions approaching from the west, so there is in theory more breeze for the tailenders and McDonald and his crew are keeping their fingers crossed that this will result in some compression within the fleet.

Then if it goes lighter around the corner, maybe it will better suit them. "We felt very comfortable coming out of Wellington," says McDonald. "We had a reasonably conservative start and in days that followed we had medium, 25 knots reaching and medium downwind and we felt very competitive. We didn’t feel we struggled at all there. So I think we have a better handle on our wardrobe and our set up in those conditions and we have had the advantage of sailing next to other boats in those conditions which is where you learn the most. So we are looking forward to a little bit more mixing it up, a bit more shifty long term strategic stuff and hopefully with the position you’re in strong winds and people are going into lighter winds there might be a bit of compression."

The crew is fine physically and are holding up mentally despite the incessant losses. In the short term there is the moral boost of rounding Cape Horn and heading back into the Atlantic - effectively the start of the run home. At present there is some divide between the boats to the north and those to the south and on Ericsson they are at present in the latter camp. "The interesting thing will be the final run into Cape Horn," says McDonald. "That's what we are a little bit worried about. There are two ways you can mess it up. You can be too far south and end up on too tight an angle or almost as bad you can be too far north and come in and have to gybe. So we are looking like that quite hard at the moment and the weather forecast hasn’t been as accurate as we would like. So we are hedging our bets a little and I think tomorrow we will have to start committing to a plan there and there is potential to gain and lose in that."