More points for Ericsson 4

Torben Grael's team first to scoring gate on leg 2 of the Volvo Ocean Race

Thursday November 20th 2008, Author: James Boyd, Location: United Kingdom

Image above courtesy of Expedition and Predict Wind

Positions at 0655 GMT

Pos	Boat	Skipper	Lat	Long	24hr	DTF	DTL
1	Ericsson 3	Anders Lewander	38 21.86S	058 00.51E	370	3073.1
2	Ericsson 4	Torben Grael	38 56.32S	058 55.74E	391	3088.4	15.3
3	Puma	Ken Read	37 17.59S	056 02.88E	360	3136.6	63.5
4	Telefonica Blue	Bouwe Bekking	38 34.41S	056 04.38E	395	3212.9	139.8
5	Delta Lloyd	Ger O'Rourke	38 36.94S	055 18.14E	428	3219.7	146.6
6	Telefonica Black	Fernando Echavarri	38 50.90S	056 09.07E	386	3228.1	155
7	Green Dragon	Ian Walker	39 01.99S	057 21.68E	365	3236.5	163.4
8	Team Russia	Andreas Hanakamp	39 35.92S	056 56.80E	388	3271.2	198.1

The first objective for the Volvo Ocean Race crews on this leg to India has been to be first to reach the scoring gate. Unusually the specification for this was along the line of longitude 58°E below 20°S (ie a line south from just east of Mauritius). Earlier this morning, at around 0345 GMT, Torben Grael and his leg one winning team on Ericsson 4 became the first to reach the gate, thereby picking up 4 points, taking her total tally to 18. She was followed by team mates on Ericsson 3, Anders Lewander's team picking up 3.5 points and their total to 8.5. The next boat expected to cross the scoring gate is Green Dragon putting them on to 14 points, and it will be interesting to see if this allows Ian Walker's team to take over second position overall from Ken Read's Puma, currently on 13 points pre-gate. Ironically both teams are slightly crippled, Green Dragon with a broken boom, Puma suffering some structural issues in her hull since yesterday morning.

Since passing the gate Ericsson 4 has turned on to a northeasterly heading as the next stop is Cochin, India more than 3,000 miles to their north (although one suspects given the meteorological hurdles they must cross before then there may be a few stops en route...)

While Ericsson 4 turned north once they'd crossed the gate, the rest of the fleet more or less in unison turned northeast mid-evening yesterday, marking their departure from the Southern Ocean.

Obviously there is the lure of the scoring gate, but looking at the map above it might seem odd that the boats have left it so long before turning north as its appear that they will be caught in the eastern side of the high pressure. However the forecast now shows that conveniently the next Southern Ocean depression that is thundering eastward to their south will extend the strong winds north, causing the high pressure to receed to the west again. Thus over the course of today the northwesterly winds in the northeastern quadrant of the depression are forecast to build, allowing the boats to race north at good pace. However their luck can only last so long and in 24 hours time it seems certain that all the boats will finally end their high speed run and the beginning of the long light wind slog north will begin.

From Ericsson 4 bowman Ryan Godfrey reports:

All is going smoothly aboard Ericsson 4 this evening and with the breeze starting to moderate it has been a good chance to start to dry out and tidy up ship.

The past few days have been fairly hectic as every couple of hours or so a rain squall has passed over us and raised the wind speed from 25kts into the 40s or so. This increase in breeze means reducing sail suitably, which requires all hands on deck irrelevant of whether you are meant to be on watch or not. As such, sleep has been somewhat disturbed of late!

We are now only a couple hundred miles from reaching the longitude scoring line and at this stage are leading the fleet with our stablemates on Ericsson 3 just 15 miles or so astern. Fingers crossed that things will stay that way for a one two result for Ericsson Racing Team on the points tally.

Everyone is rather cold and wet, and looking forward to Jules (Salter/GBR – navigator) and Torben (Grael/BRA – skipper) giving us the call to gybe onto port and head north for Cochin.

Ryan Houston, watch captain on Delta Lloyd , reports:

It's been another day of great sailing on the Delta Lloyd. We've had some great postion reports this afternoon so the guys are in great spirits as we pull some distance back on the leaders.

We switched from our fractional code zero to our downwind masthead VMG sail this afternoon as the wind settled from the mid to upper 20's down into the high teens. We are anticipating a wind shift that will allow us to gybe and head north to the trade winds...and closer to India.

Nick Bubb reports from Team Russia :

At last, two minutes to breath! I have just come off deck having peeled to our largest spinnaker; it’s a great feeling to be under max sail. The first few days have been testing to say the least, with a tricky first day followed by big wind and close racing, all of which have, of course, been coupled with a few technical challenges onboard.
After a good start, we sped round the inshore course with the lead pack only to sail in into a huge wind hole as the gradient breeze battled with sea breeze. One wrong call as we tried to steal a march on the fleet and we were toast, out the back in no wind as the others sailed off, how depressing! We were left with no choice but to pick up the pieces and battle on, which is exactly what we have done with good effect so far.
With keel issues from the word go again, I was busy early on, this time the new ram boots have been fine but the keel kept easing down from max cant as soon as we loaded the boat up. After much fiddling around, we discovered it was due to some dirt in the release valves and after a thorough clean up; everything seems to be ok now. A few small repairs here and there, but, touch wood, Kosatka is holding up well.
My personal highlight of the race so far has to be the other morning, big rolling seas, overcast sky, and freezing water. Forty knots of breeze, A6 (fractional spinnaker)and 2 reefs, fully stacked aft, Mikey (Mike Joubert/RSA) on the pumps, Jez (Jeremy Elliott/IRL) trimming me on the wheel, just blasting along with prolonged periods of over 30 knots boatspeed and a max speed of 34 knots.
This was then followed by near disaster, however, as soon after the watch change, Mikey and I were in the bow bailing out when we heard the boat take off down what must have been a huge wave. As we hit the bottom, with nowhere to go, the boat had to either roll into the breeze and broach, or Chinese gybe (an accidental gybe).
Unfortunately, the helmsman was powerless to control her and we ‘Chinesed’. Carnage on deck and down below. Sail stack in the water, keel on the wrong side, crew clipped on half underwater, runners on the wrong side, boom in the air, spinnaker in the rig, boat half under water, kit everywhere down below as various missiles launched themselves at the off watch. After what seemed like an eternity, we sorted the keel out, completed the gybe, got the kite down and gybed back to our proper course, all very relieved still to have a rig in the boat!
Anyway, enough stories for now, I must go, only 2 hours ‘till I need to be up again. We are currently engaged in a thrilling battle to try to beat both Telefónica boats and maybe even Puma to the scoring gate tomorrow afternoon. We should gybe north later on today and the crew are all very excited at warming up. For me, my feelings are slightly different, this will be the last of the Southern Ocean for a while, which unofficially starts at 40S and I do feel a tinge of regret at not following the old course and heading south for Australia.
There are certainly new challenges ahead however so I better prepare for that, if we beat Telefónica Black and Delta Lloyd to this scoring gate we will move up to 6th overall so motivation is high….. and Green Dragon is only 40 miles directly in front of us, under 2 hours away!

More photos on the following pages...