Second win for the Blues

Bouwe Bekking's VO70 first home into freezing Qingdao

Bouwe Bekking and the crew of Telefonica Blue scored their second consecutive leg win in the Volvo Ocean Race leading the depleted fleet of four boats into Qingdao, China at 15:00:25 local time (07:00:25 GMT).

Despite thick fog and being becalmed for 30 minutes with 30 miles to go, Telefonica Blue managed to find the breeze again until the finish line and hung on to their lead despite strong challenges over the last two to three days from Torben Grael's team on Ericsson 4 and in particular Ken Read's Puma. They finished after 11 days, 2 hours and 26 seconds at sea and at this time Puma had around 15 miles to go, in turn six miles ahead of Ericsson 4.

On arrival skipper Bouwe Bekking said, “I feel far from comfortable. Even if it should go wrong, the guys should all feel like the moral winners of the leg, they sailed like champions. It was the hardest leg of the Volvo Ocean Race ever. It is just great to be here in one piece and we are in one piece. I am so happy with the team, they showed great seamanship. We have Olympic medallists and offshore sailors onboard and they just got on with it and came together.

“We hit something, you can see it on the bow, but we don’t know what it was. It has crushed a bit of the bow, but that is the only thing we have found. We have checked all the bulkheads, they seem to be fine, and we have no delamination, so I am very happy with that. We will be ready for the in-port race for sure.

“We just put keel in the middle and nursed the boat in the storm. I was downstairs at the time, so I kept shouting up to the crew to slow us down. If I had been on deck, I might have pushed harder, but being downstairs was better in the end.

“It was the craziest sailing I’ve done, but we are here at last. I am like an old seaman and I think that you need to stay away from land in storms, so that is what we did. When we were by Taiwan there was 30 – 35 knots of wind, but it was the sea state that was the problem, but the boat did a glamour job.”

Bekking had kept Telefónica Blue in the top three for the entire leg. The crew picked their way through the minefield of unmarked shoals and atolls in the lee of the Philippines, watching the depth sounder drop to just a few metres, but were still determined not to give an inch, knowing, as Simon Fisher had said, that to win this leg, taking the easy way round wasn’t really an option.

The turning point was when as other boats were heading for shelter they headed out into the Luzon Strait to the south of Taiwan with winds gusting to above 50 knots. Bekking himself was forced to direct operations from the confines of his bunk, laid low with a damaged back. The team survived another, even worse storm off the northeastern tip of Taiwan, and also collided with a submerged object, damaging the crash bow section of the boat.

Behind them off Qingdao Ken Read and Puma emerged out of the fog, to cross the line at 16:17:36 local time (08:17:36 GMT) . Leg four was an impressive one for the US team - to come second after they broke their boom and had to drop anchor in the Philippines to make repairs.

“Our crew really became a team on this leg," said Read. "We have really found our legs. After our problems we came back with an unbelievable effort. We came together. There were many times when I was sat behind the computer, looking for safe havens. It was always at the back of my mind, if we needed to go to a safe place quickly. All of us have used storm sails, but none of us has had to do it three separate times on one leg. Even with that, we almost had too much sail area, but last night was the best night of sailing we had on the leg.”

Navigator, Andrew Cape, a veteran of three Whitbread/Volvo Races, added: “It was a not very pleasant course, but we had to do it. We threw the lead to survive and we came second in the end. It was nasty with lots of wind and big seas and there seemed to always be a rock in the way. It was the most difficult leg I have ever done. “

Ericsson 4 arrived at 17:04 local time (09:04 GMT) to claim third.

“This leg has been very hard on the boats, but our boat has taken it well and at least we got here, but you are never sure," commented skipper Torben Grael. "The crew has been perfect. The weather has been better than expected, and the temperature only dropped in the last few hours, when it became very cold, so we had good wind all the way in.

“I think we all want to win, but we all wanted to get here in one piece. We had lots of trouble with fishing boats and nets, we had to back down three times and there were so many boats out there. But it is the way it goes, you win some you lose some. I feel bad for the other boats. I was in that position last race and I know how it feels. It is hard for the sailors.”

Meanwhile Ian Walker's team are the only boat still racing, nursing Green Dragon along and are at present just off Shanghai still with some 350 miles to sail to the finish.

Three other boats have either retired - Telefónica Black - or suspended racing - Delta Lloyd and Ericsson 3.

In terms of the overall points tally, Ericsson 4 continues to lead on 45, but now has a lead of just 3.5 over Telefonica Blue.

Tom Braidwood reports from Green Dragon :

Well the Dragon has made it across. We are all pretty happy and have just been taking it all as one step at a time.

Luck has changed our way and we had a good trip across to China with about 20-knots of wind and mostly pointing at the mark. Then a few lucky shifts and we are now down to about 400 nm to go, almost a Sydney to Gold Coast race.

A few days ago Ian wanted us to have another go at strengthening the bulkhead. We tried a different approach this time and used our existing repair as a base and glued and bolted sail battens up the bulkhead. This has worked a treat and appears to spread the load up the face of the bulkhead well.

Getting pretty cold on board and even Neal McDonald has got a balaclava and gloves on. We are going to approach the real cold spot in the next day or so. Water temp at the moment is about 10 degrees and should get down to 2 degrees. Madness. Hopefully the weather stays kind to us until the finish and we get the Dragon there in one piece.

Go the Dragon.