Lead Change as Volvo's fly South

by Volvo media on 22 Feb 2006 ABN AMRO 2 holds the lead from Brasil 1 at 1600hrs GMT as the fleet fly east across the southern ocean. Within the past 24 hours the leaderboard has changed dramatically.

ABN AMRO ONE (Mike Sanderson) has fallen from first to last, due to an expensive gybe south at 2325 GMT yesterday and then gybing back east at 0240 GMT this morning. They are now the furthest yacht south along with Pirates of the Caribbean (Paul Cayard). The rest of the fleet has carried on the march towards Cape Horn via the ice gates, busy making the decision whether to head over the low or dodge underneath it and face heavy upwind conditions.

As the fleet fly east across the southern ocean, sightings of wildlife have been reported by every team with talk of giant squid, albatross and whales. No ice has been seen as yet but as the temperature drops down, food an essential fixture of the sailor’s day, is moving to the front of people’s minds.

Bouwe Bekking on movistar, bringing up the rear, was surprised to see his crew freely giving their food to each other. 'This is the first time that I’ve actually seen people sharing their chocolate, power bars or chewing gum. In all other Volvo races the guys were holding on like hawks to their treats, and there was always trading going on, and even buying goods off one another for hard earned dollars. Food does a lot for the moral and the moral of our troops is good, and we're ready to take the battle on.'

The first of the wildlife reports came in from ABN AMRO ONE (Mike Sanderson) relating their giant squid tale. The six foot squid attached itself to ABN AMRO ONE’s rudder, forcing the sailors to cant the boat over even further to lift the windward rudder out of the water and allow the squid to untangle itself.

On the second Dutch yacht,ABN AMRO TWO (Sebastien Josse), there was also a close encounter. Simon Fisher explained the slightly scary situation, “The whales that have come to investigate have been somewhat more remarkable on this trip. We have seen whales on other legs but only from a distance, in this part of the world they seem to have no qualms about getting up close and personal.

'Yesterday one travelled along side us about a boat length away for some time only to dive across our bow at the last moment and bump itself on the keel. This scared the living daylights out of Bicey (Nick Bice) who is somewhat more wary when these magnificent creatures swim by and left me wondering how an earth I managed to run aground in 200m of water! Luckily the whale was un-phased by his encounter with our bulb and swam off quite happily, unaware of how easily he could have ended our race! Thankfully he didn’t but I guess we now know who is boss round here!'

Neal McDonald, skipper of Ericsson Racing Team, also spoke of the many whales they have seen and the dangers of these beautiful creatures, 'We have seen two very large whales, close up. In fact one in particular was much closer than I’d have liked. Hit one of these at speed and neither party will be happy, although it is always great to see these creatures, so big, so quiet and seemingly unconcerned by our presence.'

The Pirates on the black and red boat are very upbeat today and are talking about their onboard wildlife. The RATS (rapid action technical seamen) made up of Jules Salter, Justin Ferris and Justin Clougher, swung into action this morning to fix the keel gauge string potentiometer which had broken its flexible attachment to the keel head. In a very tongue in cheek report they insisted that the gauge was essential in boat maneuvering and special work should be carried out immediately. They finally fixed the problem and as Justin Clougher joked,

'Back online now, and the keel box is once again intact and we once again, happily have completely erroneous numbers displayed on deck. It's a real pleasure to be able to share these great experiences with y'all!'

If you want to see some very spectacular video of Pirates of the Caribbean looking like she is about to break the sailing sound barrier then see: www.piratesracing.org/Chopper_Pirates.mov You’ll need to have QuickTime loaded on your PC (QuickTime is free). The video was shot from a helicopter after the Volvo fleet left Melbourne en route to Wellington.

LEG FOUR DAY 3, 21.2.06, 1600 GMT POSITION REPORT
Pos YACHT DTF SMG 24 Hr Run 24 Hr Speed DTL DTLC SGPTS LPTS TLPTS RPTD OVERALL
1 ABN2 5972 16 396 16.5 0 0 0 7 7 35 2
2 BRA1 5973 17.6 439 18.3 1 16 0 6 6 26 4
3 ERIC 5980 18.3 431 18 8 12 0 5 5 21.5 6
4 ABN1 5984 20.1 416 17.4 12 14 0 4 4 42.5 1
5 POTC 5984 19.7 447 18.6 12 13 0 3 3 24.5 5
6 MOVI 5993 19.2 448 18.7 21 16 0 2 2 27 3
7 AUS1 - - - - - - - - - - -
ABN1 ABN AMRO ONE
ABN2 ABN AMRO TWO
BRA1 Brasil 1
ERIC Ericsson Racing Team
MOVI movistar
POTC Pirates of the Caribbean

DTF: distance to finish, 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

PLPTS: projected leg points
PTP: projected overall points
OVERALL: projected position in race overall if yacht maintains current position