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Tue, 20 Dec 2005 10:09:00 UTC

Volvo Ocean Race 2005-06 started on 12 November 2005 after months of preparation and drama, as the fleet finally set off into the sunset and into the teams’ first real testing ground, a storm of over fifty knot winds.

The first weekend was full of highs and lows with the young guns on ABN AMRO TWO (Sebastien Josse) proving their worth and taking first place through that night, but the morning brought dramatic events with movistar (Bouwe Bekking) and Pirates of the Caribbean (Paul Cayard) both suffering structural damage, forcing them to head for land.

After movistar had safely arrived in Portimao, Portugal, she was pulled out of the water to assess the damage. It became obvious that the yacht had hit a submerged object. This object, perhaps a container, had sheared off the bottom of the rudder, tip of the port dagger board and damaged the front of the keel. Internally the boat was suffering major structural damage to the mountings for the keel hydraulics and the ring bulkheads. The race then began to get the yacht ready to either, sail, fly or be shipped to Cape Town.

Bouwe Bekking and his team received help from various groups, including the Spanish America’s Cup team, Desafío Español 2007 and a personal telephone call of support from the King of Spain. After two weeks of hard graft, the team decided they would lose too much preparation time in Cape Town if they completed the first leg under sail, so retired and shipped movistar, on a diverted Wallenius Wilhelmsen container ship, down to the Southern Hemisphere.

Pirates of Caribbean’s headed for Cascais in Portugal for their repairs after suffering leakage around the keel. They then eventually decided to retire from the leg and flew the Black Pearl down to Cape Town in an Antonov transport plane.

The Sunergy and Friends crew also had to face another unfortunate occurrence to add to all the problems they had to just get themselves to the start line in Vigo. Their gooseneck (the unit which attaches the boom to the mast) broke over the first weekend. They tried to fix this out at sea, but eventually were forced to make a pit stop in Porto Santos, Madeira; they suspended racing about 15 hours. This turned out to be long enough for the rest of the racing fleet to catch a weather system which shot them south towards the equator, leaving Sunergy and Friends 700 nautical miles behind the pack and sailing in totally different conditions.

Meanwhile at the front of the fleet Brasil 1 (Torben Grael) was leading the group of four front runners, ABN AMRO ONE (Mike Sanderson), ABN AMRO TWO (Sebastien Josse) and Ericsson (Neal McDonald) and the pace was hot on the race south. But by day six, as the weather warmed up, ABN AMRO ONE stole the lead as the fleet gybed downwind north east of the Cape Verde in trade winds, heading towards the equator and the doldrums.

By day eight of racing, the fleet had hit the doldrums and luckily passed through barely stopping, heading for the scoring gate at Fernando de Noronha off the Brazilian coast. ABN AMRO ONE passed through the gate on the ninth night at sea with the three yachts behind leap-frogging each other within a few miles, trying to get there first to score the most points. Ericsson was second yacht through, followed by Brasil 1 and ABN AMRO TWO; all on the same day within an hour of each other “You couldn’t ask for much closer racing than this,” observed navigator Simon Fisher from ABN AMRO TWO.

At the half way stage ABN AMRO ONE’s team had reinforced their lead, pushing south with great speed, trying to get as far south as they could before making the important left turn towards Cape Town. If a yacht made this turn too early, it could fall into the light wind region of the South Atlantic high pressure system, letting their rivals through, if they waited too long they would waste valuable miles, but the further south they went, the stronger the winds. Nightmare time for the navigators.

ABN AMRO ONE, ABN AMRO TWO and Ericsson all chose a heading due south for the first few days of this drag race, whilst Brasil 1 took a more easterly course. At first this looked like a very dubious idea, but as Mike Sanderson’s team fell into light winds the following pack concertinaed up behind them and Brasil 1 went into the lead.

Whilst the action carried on for the first four boats, Sunergy and Friends were having problems at the back, as their bad luck continued, spending almost three days trying to navigate their way through the doldrums.

The next milestone for the Volvo Ocean Race fleet was the left hand corner, which happened for the front runners on day 15, when they hooked into the strong westerly breeze and rode the high speed conveyor towards the finish, at quite literally record breaking pace. Both the Dutch boats broke the monohull 24-hour world speed record, which was previously held by movistar, first by ABN AMRO TWO and then ABN AMRO ONE as speeds kept rising. ABN AMRO ONE eventually clocked 546 nm in 24 hours.

Meanwhile, further back on the race track, Ericsson was set up 94 nm north of the two Dutch boats, with Brasil 1 sandwiched between them, as Sunergy and Friends slipped to 1,465 miles adrift.

The dramas weren’t over. Only four days out of Cape Town Ericsson reported a failure in their keel hydraulic system. Crewmember Richard Mason managed to lock the keel in one safe position, but with it came the realisation that they could no longer race the boat hard and any hope of catching the Brazilians had gone.

By day 20 Cape Town was poised to welcome the fleet. As crowds stood in the December sunshine lining the docks, helicopters hovered, and support boats milled about in Table Bay. Finally the wait was over as ABN AMRO ONE finished the 6,400 nautical mile course after 19 days, 24 minutes and 2 seconds at sea and became the leader of the Volvo Ocean Race overall.

ABN AMRO TWO made it a Double Dutch victory when they finished second at 1956GMT that same day, giving them fourth position overall. Next in was Brasil 1, who drifted over the finish line early on the morning on 2 December to claim third place podium position, equal second overall with Ericsson though the tie break gave Ericsson overall second when they finally finished fourth to finish was Ericsson, after nearly 21 days at sea, arriving in Cape Town to the welcome of their friends and family, happy to see them back on dry land.

Then finally Sunergy and Friends came into Cape Town on the 6 December, finishing their voyage of discovery and managing to tot up the third furthest 24 hour run in this leg at 503 miles. Their elapsed time ended up being 24 days, 1 hour and 33 minutes, which despite being the last yacht to arrive in Cape Town, is a faster time than the first yacht there in the 2001-02 Volvo Ocean Race.

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