Volvo Ocean Race- Sam Davies speaks openly about the first leg

by Bob Fisher on 19 Nov 2014 A quiet chat with Sam Davies after the Skipper’s Press Conference allowed me to understand the first leg of the Volvo Ocean Race 2014-2015 better.

Sam had had time to reflect on the highs and lows for Team SCA and which ones were the most important.

Beaten into them by their coaches was the dogma of not splitting away from the other six boats, unless there was an inescapable and excusable reason for so doing. The first of these was in the Mediterranean. 'Libby (Greenhalgh) and I watched the other seven stick to the original plan as we had learned from the general meteorological briefing, which was to stay along the North African coast, but Libby had seen a new development showing the stronger breeze on the European side. We debated and watched the others slow down as we made our break to the north,' said Sam. Then it was safe to believe that it was working and Team SCA was first out into the Atlantic. Sam gave Libby full credit for that.

The passage south along the African coast was relatively uneventful, if you are prepared to discard what Sam called: 'Being fished!' It occurred at night, as do most of the upsets in this type of racing. 'We had seen the lights of this boat and knew that it was fishing, and we made our line to pass ahead and miss the nets or lines. What we didn’t know was that the skipper of the fishing boat had done a 180 degree turn, and so we sailed into the net and were ‘fished’,' said Sam.

And ‘fished’ they were, with the boat coming to a dead halt from 14 knots. Mercifully for both parties, Team SCA was able to clear herself without damaging herself or the net in any way.

But the short stop had a Topsyesque effect on her position. The boats in front were sailing into stronger breezes all the time and this had Team SCA’s deficit increasing rapidly. There was, I was told, no deleterious effect on the crew – they all believed that their time would come and they could pull the fat from the fire.

The women all enjoyed the high speed sailing and dodging the St. Helena High and kept an eye on the progress, or otherwise, of Mapfre. 'As we came towards the end of the leg,' said Sam, 'we realized we were slowly catching Mapfre, so we decided to make our course further offshore towards Cape Town. You can understand how we felt when a call from the masthead identified our rival.'

'We thought they would never go in close in Camps Bay, but when they did and came to a virtual halt, we felt our luck had changed,' said Sam with a delicious grin. Their strategy had worked and they finished just over an hour ahead to take sixth place. 'That is rather more of a boost to us that one place ahead of last,' declared the Team SCA skipper.

Having followed that with a podium position in the inshore race, which Sam admitted should have been second, has given the all-women team greater confidence than they had at the start of the first leg. 'And nobody has any experience of the course for leg 2, 'she said with a smile, 'particularly with a tropical storm forecast.' That may make a great deal of difference. Watch this space.