Volvo Ocean Race- Fiji left behind as fleet heads for New Zealand

by Various Volvo Ocean Race competirors on 2 Mar 2009
News from the Volvo Ocean Race fleet heading to Rio on Leg 5.

ERICSSON 4 LEG FIVE DAY 16: RECEIVED 01.03.09 0527 GMT

A bit of relief aboard today as we finally have Puma bearing north of 270 degrees meaning that we are once again the southernmost boat in the fleet.

There is still a substantial east/west separation between us so things could rapidly change, but it is a nice feeling to be clear of the Fiji islands and back in the race lead after all our hard work in the early part of the leg.

Speaking of the leg, we recently just passed the 8000nm to go point. It’s funny to hear the guys saying 'only 8000 to go'. Our minds must be bending a little out here as 8000nm is still a bloody long way to go. The breeze is still pretty light and I suspect that we are falling behind all our earlier routing runs. One upside of this is that I am now secretly confident that my Cape Horn ETA bet is looking good, as it is one of the later dates.

Everyone is pretty relaxed at the moment as the breeze has settled and we are just happily rolling along on our endless port tack reach. Boatspeed a healthy 14kts. We are only changing sails every four hours or so. Although of late it does feel like that four hour interval is falling exactly into the middle of my off watch. Which is rather disappointing.

One new sport which is sweeping the team is pea throwing - yes you heard me right - pea throwing. We have an abundance of what we thought were wasabi coated peas - but something was lost in our Chinese and we ended up with peas covered in an unknown and flavourless coating. So we have taken to see who can throw one and get it through the mainsail clew ring (30mm) from a distance of four metres - harder than it sounds as the apparent wind has to be taken into consideration, only one through to date and that was Brad (Brad Jackson) - but there is some doubt if it went through as he claims it did!

Hope everyone is happy and safe ashore and see you in three weeks, or maybe more!

Ryan Godfrey - bowman

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PUMA LEG FIVE DAY 16 QFB: received 01.03.09 0111 GMT

Woke up grumpy this morning, or perhaps I should say - I got woken up and it made me grumpy...... ‘Rick, it’s getting light (the wind) we need to get weight forward.... you can’t sleep there’, (curled up on a bean bag in a nice drafty corner at the back of the boat), ‘we’re trying to win a yacht race here........’

I'd been up all night shooting video of our little tactical gamble to sail between the Fijian Islands rather than around as all of our competition except Telefónica Blue had opted to do..... Will it work? We'll find out long after I've sent this blog. After the Islands we will be set up with a fair amount of east/west separation as the boats line up for the scoring gate at NZ.

So back to me and my bad mood, once woken up I decided that there was no way I could get back to sleep in my now agitated state, especially with the offer I had received to sleep up in the cooling breeze under the forward hatch on a soft sail..... It’s like those rip-off holiday brochures..... What they didn't mention was that the sail would be soaking wet and my head would be next to a 10 day old trash bag! OK so what should I do? No way am I spending another minute on the computer for now, are my eyes going square! ......... There's nothing much happening on deck by the sound of things, I have all the night time footage that I need for the time being and, oh yes, the batteries are flat on the camera light anyway. Are you getting the picture here.... I don't work well when I'm in a bad mood.
My watch is reading 1510 hrs. That’s ten past three in the afternoon, but the physical time right now on the boat is 0310 hrs, that’s ten past three in the morning. We are exactly 180 degrees on the opposite side of the world from the United Kingdom so the time just sort of flips itself... why are we running on UK time or GMT? Because we will sail so much distance to the east and thru so many time zones on this leg, it makes it easier to find a time that is constant and run with that, all of our instrumentation and scheduling from Volvo also operates on GMT as well.

Cup of tea....I head off to the galley only to discover that we are out of tea bags for the next couple of days, in theory I'm the only tea drinker on the boat and I get allocated three bags per day!! Problem is that other people tend to become tea drinkers the moment they step on a boat! Oh well, I'll have a coffee. It will be my first of the trip. Mug in hand I stick my head out of the hatch to see what’s going on....... I am greeted by the most glorious starry sky imaginable, so I quickly decided that I would chill out and drink my coffee on deck ....... Hot drinks on deck are not explicitly banned, but they most certainly are frowned upon by some, but not others, on our boat. It's really dark so no-one will see me, so I sort of hide the cup inside my silhouette and head to the bow and the comfort and safety of an A4 spinnaker.

Once in position I could begin to really appreciate what a fantastic night it was. The Fijian Islands were upwind of us about 30 miles but there was still the unmistakeable smell of soil and vegetation on the wind, I thought of our emergency stop at the Philippines on the last leg and the way a 12 hour stop had actually caused us to catch the leaders. The wind was blowing around nine knots and the sea was perfectly flat, subsequently no splashing at all.... a very rare occurrence on a Volvo 70.... This fact alone is enough to cheer me up. The coffee is warm and tastes great, I have a brilliant 45 minutes up there, and no-one even knows I'm there. I'm now feeling refreshed and awake so I head down and clean my mug and the galley.

The sun is starting to poke its nose out of the horizon to the west; I should probably get to work........

Rick Deppe MCM

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GREEN DRAGON LEG FIVE DAY 16 QFB: received 01.03.09 0915 GMT

Fiji has been and gone and it is now clear that boats in the east like ourselves and Ericsson 4 did well going east and boats in the west like Telefónica did well going west.

It must have been very difficult for the more central boats to decide what to do and so Ericsson 3 and Puma separated and took different options from being within sight of each other. Amazingly enough it looks as though in a few more hours they are likely to come back together in sight of each other once again. I suspect Puma and Telefónica are very relieved to have got through the gap as cleanly as they could have easily been stuck in no wind so close to land - it was certainly a risky route and I applaud them for taking it on.

We had few choices to make being so far east and felt a little hard done by not to have crossed one or both of the Ericsson boats as they tacked onto starboard. It was certainly on the cards until a big right shift let them across our bow in the last 100 miles. For now it has been great just to feel we are back in the race. It is quite amazing that, after 5000, miles the whole fleet are within 50 miles, or four hours sailing of each other.

We are now heading due south towards New Zealand which is causing some anxiety with the two kiwis onboard. There was already some talk of swimming ashore as we sailed through the islands off the eastern tip of Fiji so we will have to stay out of swimming range of the NZ coast. I have hidden the passports just in case.

I have to say it is a real shame we are not stopping in Auckland. To sail so close and not visit the City of Sails is sacrilege. The New Zealand public love sailing and this race in particular. Hopefully the race organisers will add it back in next time and break up this monster leg.

Back onboard all is well. It is super flat water and medium winds with fast reaching sails up. I cannot remember such a prolonged period where