Volvo OR fleet tick off milestones

by Lizzie Green, Volvo OR Media on 23 Nov 2005 After a week at sea the fleet is ticking off some of their milestones in the 6,400 nm race down to Cape Town. The doldrums, the first milestone, was slightly negated as it had little or no influence on the runaway fleet and their charge southwards. The second was the crossing of the Equator, which was, for some teams, a higher priority, and the third milestone is the drag race to the scoring gate at the Fernando De Noronha. Ahead lies the half way mark of the leg, which is always a mental turning point.

At 01.30 GMT today ABN AMRO ONE (Mike Sanderson) passed through the scoring gate first, picking up 3 ½ points whilst apparently singing the famous ABBA track 'can you hear the drums Fernando'.

“After the many tough interviews that I had to do following our disappointing performance in the first inshore race, my answer was that we were, from a naval architecture point of view, supposed to be slower in those conditions of under seven knots, and that as long as the boat did what it was supposed to do, when it was supposed to do it, then we thought that we still had the right boat to win the Volvo Ocean Race“, explained a thoroughly delighted Mike Sanderson.

The equator crossing was definitely not a memorable event for Ericsson (Neal McDonald). With an average of two and a half circumnavigations per person onboard, the normal dousing of freeze dried food slops and rotten flying fish, the “mangy pigeons of the sea” was exchanged for a cup of tea. How very English!

King Neptune has been out in full force elsewhere in the fleet, keeping those ‘polliwogs’ (crew that have never crossed the equator by boat) on their toes and wondering what Neptune’s Court will dish them out. On board ABN AMRO ONE, Rob Greenhalgh was the only uninitiated but, fortunately for him, King Neptune had a date with his younger team mates on ABN AMRO TWO. Good old Neptune though, doesn’t miss a trick and emailed his ‘ministers’ onboard ABN AMRO ONE to get the job done and they willingly obliged.

Working quickly they decided on an impromptu Mohican for Greenhalgh. A strip of duct tape was applied to the meridian of his head and the northern hemisphere crewmembers attacked one side while the southern hemisphere members attacked the other, with the ship’s scissors. Nine against one. Rob didn’t really have a chance.

With Ericsson through the scoring gate at 11.30 GMT today, the fight for the third unfolded. Brasil 1 (Torben Grael) overtook ABN AMRO TWO on Sunday midday, but for much of the last 24 hours they have been within about five nautical miles and eye contact of each other. At 11.58 GMT Brasil 1 took third place within half an hour of Ericsson, quickly followed by ABN AMRO TWO at 12.12 GMT. Making Si Fi (Simon Fisher) on ABN AMRO TWO comment ring very true, “You couldn't ask for much closer racing than this!”
As the fleet starts romps away in the south easterly trade trades, the team on Sunergy and Friends (Grant Wharington) are considering rationing their food. Rather unfairly, the leading pack of four passed through the doldrums almost without noticing, but it is a different story for the team onboard Sunergy and Friends who are struggling in the heat as the doldrums came bounding towards them, full of grimace.

“We have started to take a close look at our food supplies and are considering removing a certain amount of food out of each day to push our supplied out a few more days towards the end,” writes navigator Campbell Field today. This team, who stopped briefly in Porto Santo, is paying the price of a pit stop dearly and now they have now dropped off the express elevator and added days to their trip as opposed to hours. Moral onboard is less than cheerful and Field , “the sense of humour-ometre” is running on critically low for us.”

LEG ONE DAY 10 21.11.05, 1600 GMT POSITION REPORT
Yacht Latitude Longitude DTF CMG SMG DTL DTLC LPTS ETA Overall
1 ABN1 07 07.78S 032 37.16W 03245 180 13.2 00000 +00000 7.0 30/11/05 __:__:__ 2
2 ERIC 04 47.88S 032 33.64W 03328 188 13.1 00083 +00004 6.0 01/12/05 __:__:__ 1
3 BRA1 04 40.17S 032 29.11W 03329 186 12.8 00084 +00010 5.0 01/12/05 __:__:__ 3
4 ABN2 04 36.37S 032 29.54W 03332 187 12.7 00087 +00010 4.0 01/12/05 __:__:__ 4
5 SUNF 10 33.77N 029 20.08W 04244 179 02.3 00999 -00035 3.0 09/12/05 __:__:__ 7
6 MOVI 37 07.64N 008 31.80W 06157 000 00.0 02912 -00048 2.0 26/06/06 __:__:__ 5
7 POTC 38 41.54N 009 24.95W - - - - - - - -

ABN1 ABN AMRO ONE
ABN2 ABN AMRO 2
BRA1 Brasil 1
ERIC Ericsson Racing Team
MOVI movistar
POTC Pirates of the Caribbean
SUNF Sunergy and Friends

DTF: Distance to finish, CMG: Course made good, SMG: Speed made good, DTL: distance to leader, DTLC: distance to leader change; the difference between the distance from the boat to the leader taken at the time of the last six hour poll, and the distance from the boat to the leader at the previous poll.
http://www.volvooceanrace.org/racedatacentre/positionmaps/