djuicy winner

James Boyd spoke to djuice's Erle Williams about their incredible win in the Volvo's final leg

'Pigs might fly' you might have thought if just over 24 hours ago you'd been asked about the prospects of Knut Frostad's djuice taking line honours on the leg to Kiel. But win the Norwegian team did, showing boat speed and a tactical cunning that has been lacking previously in their programme.

Part of the catalyst for their success has been Team New Zealand's Erle Williams (above), the hired gun who in La Rochelle was promoted effectively to skipper of the pink boat with legendary French navigator Jean-Bernot stepping off the sailing team, Knut Frostad moving into the chart table and Williams being put in charge of the tactical calls and having overall authority on board.

"It's very hard to jump into a campaign like this where you don't know the players so well and you don't know the boats so well," said Williams, not used to having to justify something positive happening to the Norwegian campaign. "But we've done a really good job this time. We've been really well organised, we had a good game plan and just sailed really well. Everyone did their jobs. We just sailed well."

One of the secrets to djuice's success was sailing light - they sailed with only nine crew and fewer sails. "I think sailing lighter in those conditions was certainly faster," Williams continued. "I think we were between 400 and 500kg lighter than we were previously - that's quite a lot of weight." Interestingly Tyco's Steve Hayles commented that they had taken 540kg off their boat.

Williams said that they had also done considerable work on the weather. "Jean-Yves Bernot, our weather man, we worked with him before the race and he's very experienced. We had him up in an aeroplane twice before the start and just prior tot he start and he had a chat with him and he gave us some very good information. So we knew it was going to be pretty light so we went light with the sails and light with the crew and it paid off. It certainly made the boat far more lively. We also had a couple of good sails".

Speed djuice had in spades on this leg. "We chased illbruck right down and caught them from them having a big lead on us," Williams said (is this really djuice he's talking about???) "We had Assa right beside us. We just got over them and controlled them a little bit, and then passed them."

The key tactical moment came early on as the fleet had to make the call whether they rounded Anholt Island in the middle of the Kattegat midway between the Danish mainland and Sweden. "Three of the boats chose to go west of the island," Williams picked up the story. "But there's less pressure in the middle there and we knew that the sea breeze would eventually die and the easterly gradient would come back in and the boats in the east would get it first. We did that really well". The losers - big time - were SEB, News Corp and Tyco. Meanwhile to the east the winners were those who made best of the transistion between the sea breeze and gradient breeze.

"We also tacked off at the right time," recounted Williams on how they had played the transistion. "They [Assa] stayed on starboard and ended up where there was no breeze. We tacked off early and got closer to the course knowing that the breeze would lift us eventually. We got into the breeze and from then on we just benefitted from getting the breeze first." McDonald's side of the story is that they had illbruck and djuice either side of them and they fell into a hole while the others did not. With the breeze filling in from the front djuice was the first to benefit from it and established a lead that was to see them good until the finish.

Aside from being lightweight, djuice also had some special sails. "We had a big code zero which has been working really well. It was combination of that and our light air VMG spinnaker, which has always been a very good sail," explained Williams.

Somehow the crew was also motivated. Possibly it was the $15,000 incentive that had been pledged to the crew should they win the leg. "The crew had a lot of energy to try and do well on this leg," said Williams. "They've had a tough time on this race and we had good vibes on the boat. We had a good race, the crew work was very good, the tactics were good, Knut's navigation was excellent and when you'e got a fast boat you win races. When the boat's reaching or in other conditions, the boat's off the pace."

Aside from all this it seems that the Davidson boat does like light air. "It like low stability conditions," said Williams. "But it's a bit full in the bow, so it doesn't like waves too much. It's a good light airs boat, but we could do with a smaller fin".

After his djuice experience - taken during his holiday time from Team New Zealand - Williams is to head back to New Zealand to restart his duties with the men in black.