ABN AMRO TWO arrives in Portsmouth

by Volvo media on 23 May 2006 At 19:08GMT and 34 seconds, ABN AMRO TWO finally concluded Leg 7 of the Volvo Ocean Race.

This has been one of the most traumatic legs of the Volvo Ocean Race, and of the Whitbread race too for that matter. Lives have been lost before, boats have been abandoned, but never before in the full glare of modern mass, global, communications.

The crew of Sebasitien Josse's boat will be feeling an amazing mix of emotion now that they have finished the leg and they don't have the concentration of the race to keep their minds focussed. The tragedy of the loss of crewmate Hans Horrevoets will be uppermost in the thoughts of them all, but the rest of their leg reads like the incident report of a whole round the world race, not a transatlantic leg.

[Sorry, this content could not be displayed] They battled 50 knot winds while putting aside their status as the kids of the race and, had they simply completed the race from New York to Portsmouith, they would have earned their spurs. But they then achieved the virtually impossible by sailing back in horrendous gale conditions to recover their crewmate Hans after he had been washed overboard. They worked for hours to try to resuscitate him and then had to continue towards shore with his body aboard.

If that one tragedy wasn't enough to cope with, they then had to go to the rescue of the movistar crew who's boat was struggling with a loose keel.

In a textbook operation they recovered the ten men from movistar after they abandoned ship and, escorted by HMS Mersey, brought their packed boat to the shelter of Falmouth where Hans' body was transferred to a Royal Netherlands Navy Frigate for it's journey home, and tranferred movistar's crew into RIBs so that they could be taken ashore.

Then they continued their race to Portsmouth.