Cape Verdes restart

Dramatic concertinaing of the fleet in the Volvo Ocean Race

The leading crews must be wondering when they will get their break: the last 48 hours has seen the Volvo Ocean Race fleet pass the Cape Verde islands off the coast of Africa, with the front runners continually having less breeze than the boats astern. From the 20+ knots speeds the fleet enjoyed for the last few days, so boat speeds were back to single figures on Saturday morning , although not as low as the frontrunners experienced leaving the Med. The result has been an inward concertinaing of the fleet. On Friday afternoon, Telefonica Black were bringing up the rear of the fleet, more than 230 miles off Ken Read's leading Puma. Sunday morning, Telefonica Black remain the backmarker but are less than 100 miles from Puma.

With more pressure and a nice easterly direction, the boats all opted to round the Cape Verdes to the west, not wishing a repeat of the Canary Islands debacle that saw Green Dragon and in particular Telefonica Black drop off the pace due to taking a passage through or the wrong side of the Atlantic island group.

Friday afternoon and the front runners were to the northwest of the Cape Verdes and gybed south, still blazing away at speeds in excess of 20 knots with Puma leading and with Ericsson 4 20 miles astern. The timing of this gybe was important. Ericsson 4 gybed early in order to drop injured crewman Tony Mutter off on to a fishing boat they rendez-voused with off the northwestern most island of the group, Santo Antao (this transfer took place early on Friday evening). Puma was next to gybe south, followed by Ericsson 3. However it was Ian Walker's Green Dragon that chose the bravest strategy taking up a lane furthest west.

Come Friday night the wind speed was dropping, the front runners sailing into less pressure. This trend was to continue throughout Saturday morning, when the three frontrununers furthest south were all down to single figure boat speeds while backmarker Telefonica Black was still making 17 knots to the northwest of the Cape Verdes. The wind eventually picked up across the race course through Saturday but there still seemed to be more pressure at the back of the pack and off to the west. The westerly positioning of Green Dragon paid off and throughout the day she was sailing at 3-5 knots faster than the front runners. From being more than 100 miles adrift of Puma, by the end of Saturday she had more than halved this deficit.

Saturday morning and Ericsson 3 and Puma were neck and neck and throughout the afternoon were locked in their own match race for the lead eventually won by Anders Lewander's team who pulled ahead of Puma late in the afternoon.

Finally last night the breeze evened out over the race course. This morning Puma have regained the lead - just - but overnight Green Dragon have separated even more to the west and are once again making better progress south.

Next stop - the Doldrums....

Ian Walker reports from Green Dragon :

We are now coming up to a week at sea and it is passing quickly thanks to great downwind conditions. It is starting to get very warm down below making sleep harder.

The main events today were the numerous attacks of flying fish one of which hit Andrew and one hit Damian full in the face. I now see what the helmsman's driving helmets are for. The other less fortunate event was Neal having to cut his wedding ring off to save a finger that he bashed. The swelling was getting pretty big so the hacksaw came out - sorry Lisa I am sure it can be fixed in Cape Town and you can make him buy you a diamond while he is at it!

Guo (Guo Chuan – MCM) is doing some great work with the various cameras although Justin had to do a bit of editing after recounting some tales of his youth without realising the camera was on.

Back in the nav station Ian (Moore – navigator) is smiling for the first time since we lost miles at the Canaries as we seem to have done well on the fleet by hitching out hard west.

It is a complex weather situation and anything could happen at the Doldrums. For now at least we are back snapping at the heels of the leaders - we thought for a while it could have been even better but the wind didn't shift to the right as hoped.

As always spirits are high on the Green Dragon and we are rattling on south at 20 knots into a nasty head sea and towards the inevitable meeting with King Neptune at the equator - I am more worried about this right now than any sched positions.


Phil Harmer reports from Green Drago n :

Greetings all from the Green Dragon

After week 1, the racing is still as close and as interesting as it was on day 1, which intense but the sailing has been great.

I should start at the beginning, thank you so much everyone involved the start. It was a great event and a real privilege to be a part of.

I emailed my fiancée Charlotte a few days ago, saying that it didn’t feel like the start of the Volvo Ocean Race until about 1 hour before we left, when this amazing feeling came over the village and we all started saying our goodbyes. It’s hard enough saying goodbye to Charlotte and her family; I can’t begin to imagine how it feels for our guys with young kids.....

The start was full of drama for us with gear failure, something that has never happened to us before. We just got another position report and we are slowly getting a bit back on the leaders which is nice to hear after a few days of not really knowing how we are positioned....

As for life onboard, the days are really flying by, which is good and the sailing really is magic. Everyone onboard is in really good spirits and gets on very well; I think it shows the quality of the crew as a group. Our only real worry has to be Neal MacDonald. He hurt his knee a few days ago which has been a concern, but he is being treated by medic Tom (Braidwood), following some great advice by doctor Tommo (Mark Thompson). It’s really great to have people like that literally at our finger tips. Neal also had a shocker the other day, wearing his wedding ring. It got stuck and cut his finger, not very badly, but enough to look slightly infected, swell up and force us to cut his ring off (sorry Lisa if you are reading this before he writes to you....) Apart from that, we have had the occasional attack from flying fish, hitting me a few times and whoever dares to stick their head above the stack!! The water is warmer and the temperature is getting hotter every day. Downstairs is a bit of a sweat box, which is good for the few of us athletically overweight!!!

Well guys, not much more to report, might go and have another one of our beautifully prepared meals and fill it full of flavour with everybody’s favourite, TABASCO!!!

Hope this finds you all well, and I’ll write to you again from the southern hemisphere!

Phil Jameson writes from Ericsson 4 :

We're a man down today after having to evacuate Tony Mutter off the yacht yesterday. His condition wasn't improving and after seeking medical advice from onshore, the decision was made to get him off.

As we were already reasonably close to the Cape Verde islands, it made for a convenient drop-off point. We organised to meet a fishing boat just off one of the islands. The wind didn't play ball very well though and we ended up fully drifting in 1 knot of wind. When we finally found the boat, Tony got in his survival suit and basically jumped overboard. Very sad for him but better than a full emergency in the middle of the Atlantic later on.

It is hard enough to sail these boats with 10 people and as we were preparing to get racing again, it became obvious that the next 2 weeks is going to be bloody tough without Tony.

It has been a great sail down for the last 4 days. Very funny to go so close to Lanzarote the other night. A few of us talked about popping into our old local pub 'McSorley's', and downing a 'quick six', but it was decided that it would be better if we continued racing.

A couple of us have developed a bad case of 'gunwhale bum' from the salt on the skin. Not a very good look at all and extremely uncomfortable. The need to wash with fresh water after a watch is critical otherwise it could get a bit out of hand.

We figured that we lost about 50 miles during our detour, so we are fighting on as best we can. As we have all seen, anything can happen in sailing so we are just trying to stay in touch with the pack and see how it all pans out.

It's fantastic to see Ericsson 3 battling it out with Team Puma at the front of the pack.

Keep the heat on them boys!!


From on board Team Russia Mark Covell writes:

The winds are getting lighter, the man smells are getting stronger and the will to eat up the sea miles is certainly not fading away. In my blogs I have tried to bring you the feelings from onboard not just the A,B & Cs of daily life on this V70. Here are some ongoing themes from life above and below deck.

Food is obviously an on-going topic. The preparation is simple, boil water, tip freeze-dry food into eski, add water, re-hydrate. Then serve up with a large ladle, doing your best impression of every prison film you have ever seen.

I like to get a good splat in the food bowl before I lean over to the bemused crewman and say in hushed voice “It’s tonight, we’re breaking out, we’re getting out…. You coming?” It gets the same strange look every time.

The flavours range from bland to blander. The all time favourite is the eagerly anticipated Chicken and Mushroom Thai Curry. The big benefit of this dish is for once the mushrooms actually look like mushrooms. The food itself can’t bring everything that a growing Volvo Ocean sailor needs to keep fit and healthy, so let me introduce the second biggest topic outside the subject of winning a yacht race: supplements. They come in all shapes and disguises. The fish oil tablet repeats on you all day until it’s time to take another one. The rest of the pills and powered drinks just give you wind. The sound of creaking sheets, easing on the winches above deck can often be drowned out by fluctuant flatulence emitting from the sleeping bears bellow. If only we could harness the power to ease us through the Doldrums.

Needing a breath of fresh air myself from my own cramped space I just put my head up out of the hatch and ask for inspiration about the next biggest topic discussed. Stig (Westergaard) impressively suggested that politics and philosophy got the biggest airtime on his watch…. Deep. But without doubt it’s the constant question of “Who has nicked my spoon” that got the vote.

In the effort to keep the weight down someone thought we only needed one spoon per person and three spare spoons to get us to Cape Town in good shape. After only three days at sea we were four spoons down. Now if you think this is pretty unimportant thing to worry about on the VOLVO OCEAN RACE - LIFE AT THE EXTREME, you must remember that we only have one bowl and one spoon each. Loose your spoon and life can get pretty extreme.

Tack Back and Stack

Last night was hot and humid. My choice to sleep under my media desk straddling the two small beams that run down the floor was justified. We were approaching the Cape Verde Islands in light winds and I knew we were going to be gybing all night. That would mean being woken and moved from side to side like a sack of potatoes about once every hour. Please don’t feel too sorry for me, as the lads sailing the boat would get a lot less sleep than I would. The real reason I needed to keep a low profile was because I wanted to keep out of the military manoeuvres involved in stacking. Let me introduce you to the art, and it is an art of STACKING

stack |stak|
noun
1) a pile of objects, typically one that is neatly arranged : a stack of boxes.
• ( a stack of/stacks of) informal a large quantity of something : there's stacks of work for me now!
2) arrange (a number of things) in a pile, typically a neat one DERIVATIVES
ORIGIN Middle English : from Old Norse stakkr ‘haystack,’ of Germanic origin.

In modern nautical terms and in the case of the VO70 rule it is the act of moving everything that isn’t bolted down, to the preferred side of the boat. That can mean forward in light airs or as far aft and to windward in heavy airs. The bottom line is, whenever the boat tacks or gybes, the stacking team gets busy. They split into two groups, one stacks the sails on deck and the other moves all the kit and equipment below. I half expect them to break into a sombre rhythmical song like a prison chain gang.

The call goes out “let’s gybe” and like a pack of silent ants shifting a twig ten times their size, the crew descends to commence the stack. The whole show lasts about 10 minutes and depending on how wet the sails are the team can move up to 2.5 tones each time, 300kg of that is food bags. Each food day-bag we eat is one less they have to stack. I of course due to the rule am not allowed to help in the fun and as I have already made myself reasonably unpopular in closely filming this chore, prancing about, getting in the way, carrying no more than a small Sony video camera, I now try to keep low profile.

Now you understand my decision to hide in my hole in the back last night. So when you hear in a race report that a boat put 20 short tacks up the coast for example. It wasn’t just the case of turning the wheel, swinging the keel and sheeting on. It involves a lot more huffing and puffing, panting and persuading than you ever thought before. So you now know why Volvo navigators and tacticians, think twice before they call for a full “tack back, and stack!”

From on board Ericsson 3 Gustav Morin writes:

First of all we on E3 want to send our thoughts to our teammate Tony Mutter who has to retire from this leg because of a knee injury. We really feel bad for his sake and the crew who has to sail on without him.

On Ericsson 3 we are still working 100 percent. Two days ago we were more than 25 miles behind Ericsson 4 and yesterday evening we passed them. We could actually see them visually passing behind us.

We are very pleased with our position for the moment. We gybed south outside the Cape Verde islands seven hours ago and now we are concentrating on not being covered by the wind shadow of Cap Verde.

Latest report told that we have made big gains on Puma, who is now 29 miles in front of us. It's a long distance but everything can happen. The Doldrums are coming closer and it seems it's going to be a parking lot.

Because of that this is still a very open race. The wind will shift a lot in the coming days. Some boats can come with wind from behind whilst another parks up completely, just like in Gibraltar when we were leading with 30 miles and suddenly started going backwards because of the current. At the same time, our opponents were closing in and passing. A feeling of frustration I hope we will not need to experience again.

So to the wilderness topic. I thought whales and dolphins would be the coolest animals on this trip. But so far the fly fish are the most notable. Yesterday night we were invaded by them and several of the crew were hit in the chest and even in the head. Maybe we should start wearing helmets.

I just went up on deck and stood in the aft waiting for navigator Aksel Magdahl to finish his ‘business’, when I suddenly got tackled by a fish that died instantly and fell over Aksel's shoulder and almost ended up in his pants.

What will Mother Nature bring us next?