Is it slow - yes or no?

John Greenland quizzed djuice dragons skipper Knut Frostad about their Davidson design

Right from the word go the sailing community questioned djuice's decision to select Laurie Davidson as the designer for their two boat Volvo Ocean Race campaign. Though Davidson, 73, is an accomplished America's Cup class designer, his experience with the Volvo Ocean 60 rule is limited to the djuice campaign. Meeting the critics half way and having the Farr design office produce lines for one of the boats could have at least proved the Davidson designed boat was on the pace or not, however this option was never taken.

The team are lie in seventh place overall, with just Lisa McDonald's all-women crew on board Amer Sports Too behind them, after three legs. All the teams also counting a poor result (outside top five) have at least finished with one podium finish - unfortunately the djuice boys have not. It is not surprising that questions continue to be asked of Norweign team's boat.

Prior to leg four in the Volvo Ocean Race - the second Southern Ocean leg and theoretically the most suitable leg for the 'fat bottomed' boat - madforsailing.com's John Greenland caught up with skipper Knut Frostad to talk about the thoughts of his competitors. Does the skipper himself think he has a slow boat?

"You can always want more speed, but we have a boat that’s really fast downwind," said Frostad. Unfortunately the skipper, covered head to toe in pink clothing, has seen very little downwind sailing over the 19,000nm so far covered by the Volvo Ocean Race fleet.

Though it is possible to follow the race with incredible detail using Virtual Spectator it is still very difficult to see whether Frostad really does have a downwind flyer as the skeds occur every six hours where anything can happen from teams ripping sails, running into weed, to wiping out.

But, when the teams approached Sydney Harbour Heads at the end of leg two djuice clearly had an incredible downwind advantage over Grant Dalton's Amer Sports One. "Grant Dalton at the end of leg one said we were slow and then we just sailed around him into Sydney on leg two - I don’t think he would say it after that," propositioned Frostad - though just a single instance in a marathon 32,000 mile race it certainly proved the pink machine does have it's preferred conditions.

Was choosing Davidson as the designer a mistake? "I don't think that we made a mistake," responded the Norweign skipper. "I agree we have some weaknesses in some areas, but I think we have worked well to solve those weaknesses. And there are certainly other areas where we are fast." However, Frostad agreed, the team simply haven't had those conditions. "But, I don’t think it’s the feeling in the team that we have a problem," said Frostad.

djuice is not the only team to spot speed problems in particular condtions - Amer Sports One has recognised a problem with heavy air downwind sailing, particularly in winds over 25 knots; and a couple of teams have noticed John Kostecki's illbruck Challenge is a little slow in light wind tight reaching conditions.

This is where the pink dragons have an advantage - their second boat is being transported around the world on container ships allowing the team to run two boat tuning sessions to refine settings where problems (such as light air sailing) are found. "It’s very useful. I think we have, although only time will tell, managed to solve the problems we found. We’ve also worked on re-tuning to sort out speed problems in that area," explained Frostad. "We had a little problem in the light wind in the first leg which we worked very hard on in Cape Town and that improved dramatically on the third leg, we felt very good in light airs."

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