Volvo Ocean Race Leg 3 - Australia Day onboard Team SCA

by Corinna Halloran on 26 Jan 2015 Volvo Ocean Race Leg 3 - Stacey Jackson is very excited about today. No, it’s not because today is the final full day at sea. And it’s not because we’ve finished our ‘Great Vietnamese Tack-Off.’ Nope, Stacey Jackson is very excited because it’s Australia Day.

Australia Day is a national Australian holiday honours the arrival of the First fleet on 26 January 1788.

Earlier Cook named Botany Bay on 29 April 1770. Capt. Cook literally ran into Australia—when he was sailing along the coast. The day is typically celebrated with sausage and prawns on the barbeque (not shrimp as ‘shrimp’ are American), a few cold beers, and a game of backyard cricket with mates. Stacey’s favorite part of Australia Day is the Lamingtons cake—a traditional sponge cake with chocolate and coconut.

To celebrate on board, Stacey brought a few goodies including an Australian umbrella hat, a wrist sweat band for the grinder, and a head sweat-band for the helmswoman (both Australian themed). Unfortunately, we lost the umbrella hat to a small gust, but we are hoping a lucky fisherman will find the hat. There’s also a secret stash of Tim-Tams on the boat and we are eagerly awaiting their reveal.

Australia Day precedes the ‘Great Vietnamese Tack-Off’ (G.V.T.O.)—an upwind stretch of about 160 miles along the Vietnamese coast of which we needed to short tack between land and a very strong opposing current. In total we completed about 15 or so tacks.

'I thought it was going to be a lot worse,' Stacey said. 'I expected a lot more tacks and no rest. We had about an hour or so on each tack, some longer, so it was easy to sneak in rest.'

'We knew it was coming,' Sara said. 'So we’ve been spending the last few days resting and gearing up for the ‘squillion’ tacks.'

Throughout the G.V.T.O. we continuously dodged small Vietnamese fishing boats and pots. The Vietnamese appear to fish in clusters, so we would go for a few miles of no boats and then a few miles bobbing and weaving the brightly colored boats.

Both parties (the fishermen and us) were mesmerized by the others’ boat—neither group having seen anything like the others’ boat as well. Closer towards sunset, as the final tacks increased, the fishing boats increased and we were sailing past very small boats that resembled teacups. By nightfall, there were so many boats along the coast that you’d almost expect there to be a city along the coast.

We’re down to the final day of the leg—and tomorrow we will check another leg of the Volvo Ocean Race off. It is a bittersweet moment. 'The first two weeks of this leg were great, as we stayed in touch with the rest of the fleet the entire time and we learned a lot,' Annie said. 'However this last week has been tough as we lost miles we were not able to gain back.'

So we will sail into Sanya tomorrow afternoon not only excited to reach a new country and culture, but we are also excited to start off to Auckland in eleven days. (11 days!!!) We will be rested and rearing to go—to once again give it our all and once again that we are a serious force on the race course!