Black boat makes it eight

The arrival of Fernando Echavarri's team completes leg one of the Volvo Ocean Race

The last two arrivals have pitched up in Cape Town in the Volvo Ocean Race.

Ireland’s Ger O’Rourke’s last minute Irish/Dutch entry, Team Delta Lloyd safely crossed the finish in Cape Town last night at 2303 GMT (0103 local time), to finish the leg in seventh position. Although they have been at sea for just 23 days, 10 hours, 09 minutes and 22 seconds (23.10:09:22), it must surely have felt like a lifetime, given the amount the crew had to learn about the boat and about themselves in such a short time.

O’Rourke said, “It’s been a big learning curve and it’s not going to come overnight. I’m looking at this as a stepping stone for 2011. We’re learning how to improve every day. When the Russians passed us, the crew morale dropped a bit, but we were happy we could keep racing (despite the mast damage). It was quite a good repair we made at sea and from that point of view, we’re happy to have sailed her here, we’ll repair her and we’ll be faster and wiser next time.”

Matt Gregory, navigator added, “We collected a lot of data on this leg and we’ll take that and figure out some new sail crossovers and polar tables for the boat. We’ve broken some things and we have a big job list. I might go for a little wine tour tomorrow and then it’s straight back into it. We still have to figure out how to get to India. Nobody on board has every done that before!”

Team Delta Lloyd now ties with Team Russia, four points all, but the tie is broken in favour of Delta Lloyd who has more consistently higher results across the in-port race and the first leg.

Team Delta Lloyd’s entry into the 10th Volvo Ocean Race was only confirmed on 11 September 2008 - one month exactly to the start of leg one. Where their competitors had been preparing and training for several years, O’Rourke’s team had just days. They had acquired ABN AMRO One, the winning boat from the previous Volvo and completely refitted it to bring it in line with the demands of this year’s event. The full race crew was not formally announced until the crew arrived in the start port of Alicante, a day and a half before the official opening of the race village.

The 6,500 nautical mile leg from Alicante to Cape Town was certainly a proving ground, with tactical decisions to be made early on in the course, particularly in the Gibraltar Straits and negotiation the Canary Islands and the Cape Verde Islands. The weather Gods threw everything they could think of at the fleet including strong currents, oily calms, high winds and huge seas, and Team Delta Lloyd negotiated it all in fine style.
With no time or budget to order new sails, Delta Lloyd has sailed this leg with their first and final generation sails, while some teams have used generation four and five sails.

O’Rourke says the boat is still competitive, particularly in heavy airs where the square metres of sails they have may be the deciding factor rather than the generation. They discovered, as late as day 21, that their fractional code zero sail was a more effective sail than the A6 spinnaker they had been flying.

“The Russians walloped us over the past 24-hours and the A6, AKA ‘the lemon’ was to blame. It’s quite depressing, and bitterly frustrating, to be passed as quickly as we were, but not know sail crossovers is one of the difficulties with a late entry programme. We are learning,” wrote navigator Matt Gregory.

They suffered damage to their rig 10 days out from the start, when the starboard jumper (part of the rig) was fell out of the rig and bounced down the deck, narrowly missing the crew. It took the crew 12 hours to make a repair, which was effective even in the heavy westerly gale.

O’Rourke says his crew will have a full day and a quarter to rest and relax before they set about the long job list which has to be completed before the fleet takes off again on 15 November.

Stricken Telefónica Blac k, skippered by Spaniard Fernando Echávarri, was last home on leg one, crossing the finish off Cape Town today at 1643 GMT (1843 local time) to complete the passage from Alicante in 24 days 04 hours 43 minutes and 15 seconds (24:04:42:14). She was the last boat to finish leg one of the Volvo Ocean Race and the team earns one point, bringing their total to seven points and putting them in fifth place overall.

Echávarri said: “It’s really good to be here. There has not been much wind during the last week and it has not been possible to even change position or gain anything. The boat is not in a good state and it was hard for a long time not to push with the emergency rudder. It’s good to arrive in Cape Town to give the shore crew time to prepare the boat and for the team to get some rest. It’s a really long race and we have got lots of legs to go.”

For Telefónica Black the first leg was one of mixed fortunes, ultimately ending for the team when they launched of a bad wave on day 19, 29 October, crash-landed and sheared off a rudder. The crew had to sail the rest of the course with an emergency rudder.

As Navigator Roger Nilson explained: “We have learned that we have a boat which is very past power reaching, proven from the equator to the latitude of Bahia Salvador. Our boat is also quite fast, generally in light air, but we have problems with our speed broad reaching and running in medium and hard conditions. Before the Canary Islands, we found ourselves left behind by Green Dragon, Puma and Ericsson 3 when sailing close to them.

“The frustration of lacking down wind speed probably led to our mistake going west of the Canaries. Regardless of wind predictions, it was far too early to leave the fleet, a bad mistake at the time. Approaching the Cape Verde Islands, things changed fast to our advantage as the leading boats hit the Doldrums far north and we could catch up.

“We came out from the Doldrums perfectly (day 10, 20 October) and made big gains on the leading three boats. We were sailing smart and fast and on night were dead even with Puma, half a nautical mile away and we had Ericsson 4 only six nm in front after having been 150 nm behind these boat at one stage.

“At Salvador our problems started as we all began sailing more open wind angles and our speed problem came back as an old nightmare. This lack of down wind speed became even more obvious when the wind picked up and Ericsson 3 came flying past from behind. So did our friends on Telefónica Blue, but not as fast as Ericsson 3, but still faster than us.

“It felt very frustrating to lose these two places on pure lack of boat speed. We pushed as hard as we could, but they just passed us. At the same time, we noticed that the three front-runners also had speeds we could not match.

“After all this frustration, the rudder just broke for unknown reasons and the story was all over. We were limping behind the whole fleet.”

The fleet will now stay in Cape Town until the start of leg two to Cochin, India on 15 November.

Overall Leaderboard (Provisional)
1. Ericsson 4: 14 points
2. PUMA: 13 points
3. Green Dragon: 11 points
4. Telefónica Blue: 10 points
5. Telefónica Black: 7 points
6. Ericsson 3: 5 points*
7. Delta Lloyd: 4 points*
8. Team Russia: 4 points *