Volvo Ocean Race blogs - Day 1

by Various competitors on 13 Oct 2008
Day 1 Blogs from various boats in the Volvo Ocean Race. The fleet of VO70's departed from Alicante, Spain on Leg 1 of the VOR and have now passed through the Straits of Gibraltar and into the Atlantic Ocean.

Delta Lloyd

What a way to start the Volvo ocean race! We ripped out of Alicante at 25-28 knots of boat speed, sailed for 12 fast and furious hours.. and then parked the boat. A massive hole swallowed us and digested us for evening supper. In the course of 30 minutes, the wind speed dropped from 25 knots to under 5. It felt like we smashed into a brick wall…we simply stopped.

We changed sails, gybed, changed sails again yet we were at the mercy of the wind. We simply had to wait, painfully, for the wind to return. We were going absolutely nowhere.

We are now sailing along nicely with our code 0 upwind sail. It feels great to be sailing at over 10 knots again. We've lost a handful of miles overnight to the boats that escaped the light wind first, which is frustrating ...but it’s a long leg, and there is plenty of time to make up ground. Our boat is performing fantastically well and our entire crew tips our hats to our shore crew that did a miraculous job getting the boat ready for Leg 1.

Matthew Gregory
Navigator Delta Lloyd
Sent: 12 October 2008 13:06
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Green Dragon

Position: 36:4:14N , 4:30:9W
Speed: 11 knots: Course: 213 deg.

We are now nearly 24 hours into the race and we are settling into our watch system and daily rhythm. Its 4 hours on 4 hours off for the lads and Ian (Moore – navigator) and I grab whatever sleep we can between us.

Despite a series of problems at the start you would have to say that it has been a good 24 hours for the Green Dragon as we are lying in 3rd place as we approach Gibraltar.

Both the Ericsson boats are launched thanks to good boat speed and a smart tactical move to the north. We also did well north of most of the fleet but we were scared to go too near the north shore of the Alboran Sea for fear of getting stuck under the mountains.

As it was, we got stuck in the middle for a few hours, but we are now moving nicely again. On board conditions are easy but we do have our frustrations. Our main frustration has been not been getting the position reports on time as these give a good indication of who has what wind where - the weather forecasts are virtually useless in this area under these conditions. We also have Tom Braidwood working full time to rectify our keel issues. Other than that, the sea is flat the sky is clear and we have more boats behind us than in front so life is pretty good!

Ian Walker – skipper
(received 10.50 GMT today)

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Telefónica Black

'Boats are all right, it's the men on 'em...', as Conrad wrote once.
And he was bloody right, it is the men who man them are responsible for the achievements and failures on board, the boats are nearly the perfect racing machines and we are sailing one of those!

Spirits are high as we approach the Strait, the last gate for those so well-known waters, till we face the Canary Islands and the trade winds, and life goes with the normal tension of a regatta, but we all know it is a long way still to go. We are starting to feel the difference between the Med warm waters and those of the Atlantic, and most of it at night!

Sent: 12 October 2008 09:39
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Telefonica Blue

What a day to start in, plenty of breeze, fast sailing with the spinnaker up, and we were neck and neck with Ericsson 4, not bad at all, we had great speed but.....................all of a sudden a sickening crack. It turned out that a part of our steering broke, only 20 miles out from the start.

Only one rudder was working, so we made a beauty wipe-out. We had to take the spinnaker down and have been sailing slow for nearly 6 hours, when in the mean time Pepe (Ribez) and Xabier (Fernandez) were working on the repair.

At one stage we tried to put up a big spinnaker, but we were totally out of control so quickly changed back to a small jib. Of course an option was to stop, but since the breeze is going to die, this would mean a long and painful sail out of the med.

Still not sure if we are going to stop and take the 12 hour penalty, we know it will be expensive, as the boats ahead will always sail in more pressure and will stretch away from us.

We have to shore crew on standby, and have until Gibraltar to make my mind up. How do we feel? Just gutted. The good thing is that we crawled back on some of the other boats, but the Ericsson guys are in fat city.

Cheers,
Bouwe
(Bouwe Bekking – skipper)
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Ericsson 3 - Gustav Morin (MCM)

This could be the most important hours of the race. The first boat to pass through Gibraltar will hit the trade winds first and probably get a big advantage.

Therefore, we are fighting hard on Ericsson 3.

We are in a watch system but in every manoeuvre all hands are called on deck. And since the wind has been, and still is, quite shifty, the guys have not got a lot of sleep.

But our spirit and mood is high anyway. Not the least because we are going really well. PUMA was in front of us for a long time but we chased them up and passed them. Now we are fighting our team comrades on E4 who are just a few miles ahead of us.

We started of with a wind at around 30 knots and left Alicante with good pace, even though the wind dropped a lot when we got close to land before passing the last mark and heading out to sea.

We were really ripping for a while with almost 30 knots of boat speed on the log.

Hopefully I'll sort it out soon.

Oh, have to stop. We are gybing again.

(Received at 0041 GMT today)
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