Volvo Ocean Race - Too close for comfort as fleet pushes on + Video

by Jonno Turner on 17 Oct 2014 In the Volvo Ocean Race it is mile by mile, hour by hour. The bottom of the boat is quiet - a thick, black blanket of silence.

Floating in the dark, a pair of tired eyes peers at a screen – scanning the backlit glass, eyes darting back and forth like ants, left to right. Refreshing, reading, re-strategising.

They’ve been there for hours, for days now – analyzing the numbers, watching for the wind patterns, waiting for the counter to tick down.

When you’re five days into a six and a half thousand mile journey, distance is everything.

But distance comes in many forms. There’s the distance to the competition – a hair’s breadth for much of this race – the whole fleet stretching over just a six-mile stretch of Atlantic Ocean this morning.

There’s the distance to the next waypoint, a tiny archipelago just off the eastern coast of Brazil, called Fernando de Noronha. That’s where these boats must head, after rounding the Canaries, and before the final straight to Cape Town.

Then there’s the distance to the elusive trade winds – pushed further south than usual due to a stormy front in the Atlantic.



Generously blowing 20-25 knots, compared to the mid-teens gust slowly nudging the boats along right now, they’ll give the exhausted and exasperated fleet a helping hand on their way.

But distance, or a lack of it, also brings challenges. Some are physical. 'We are nine, in a very small space, with all of our things, smells and snoring,' writes Francisco Vignale, on board Mapfre.

But mainly, they’re psychological. 'A gybe for Abu Dhabi!' shouts Pascal Bidégorry forcefully, staring across the sparkling water at the Emirati boat slicing up the waves one by one.

It’s a staring war, you see. You blink, we blink. You gybe, we gybe. And it’s becoming clear that these teams are a little too close for comfort.

'It’s difficult to decide what to do,' admits Mapfre navigator Nico Lunven. 'We have two boats behind us and one in front. If you make one small mistake you lose a lot of ground, so the objective is just to make less mistakes than the others.'

It’s the kind of competition usually reserved for short and sharp bursts, for an hour long In-Port Race, racking up the manoeuvres one by one – an all-out sprint to the finish.

'It’s going to be a long nine months if it’s like this all the way,' chuckles Simon Fisher on board Azzam. His skipper Ian Walker has been taking naps at the navigation desk, scared of missing a single second of the action.

Sailing so close isn’t easy. It’s intense, it’s in your face, and it’s emotionally draining.

'We are sailing as fast as we can, 24/7,' explains Annie Lush of Team SCA, during a rare moment of down time. Her crew led the fleet as past Gibraltar, but has since fallen back down the pecking order. It’s distance lost, and it’s distance to make up.

'The idea is that we do four hours on, four hours off – but so far on this trip, there hasn’t been much of the four hours off!'

Watch systems? Crew rotation? It’s pretty much all gone out of the window, and we’re less than a week in. Teams often need all sailors on deck in order to keep pace with their rivals. It’s tough to maintain that level of focus for an extended period.

'I was woken up four times during my last four hour off watch,' grumbles Team Alvimedica’s Mark Towill, standing sleepily at the helm.

For a sailor, sleep is just another sacrifice made to the sea.

The only thing to do is learn. Even the most seasoned pros have a lot to learn – and they’re not too proud to admit it.

In fact, sharing the same bit of ocean, with the same boats, in the same conditions, is invaluable, explains Abu Dhabi’s Simon.

He’s been taking part in his fourth Volvo – and is amazed by just how close these boats still are at this point. 'It gives us an opportunity to see what makes these boats go fast,' he reasons. 'It’s important to look at the bigger picture.'

It’s a big picture, yes – but it’s one that they’ll all be relieved to know is getting smaller. Mile by mile, hour by Volvo Ocean Race