Six legs complete, just three to go. Or at least when this log appears we will have finished the 5,000 nautical-mile leg from Itajai in Brazil to Newport, Rhode Island.
This city is a major sailing centres and a place where I spent 18 months sailing many years ago, so it’s a home of sorts – even if only for 10 days before the final ocean stage of the Volvo Ocean Race.
Getting here has been a hard slog even though we’ve been sailing through tropical waters for most of the 16-day leg from South America.
After last week, when we had regained the lead of the race, we mistimed a key gybe and sailed too far into the light winds of a high-pressure system off the Caribbean.
Into the lead
That move almost cost us dearly as it allowed Charles Caudrelier to move into the lead of this leg on his Chinese Dongfeng Racing Team.
Still we’ve been able to claw our way back up the fleet once again, particularly in reaching conditions when the breeze is coming perpendicular to our boat. We’re fast on this angle, definitely faster than most of the other boats as we’ve now refined our settings after thousands of miles of practice.
We eased past Iker Martinez on Mapfre in the same conditions and gradually gained on Dongfeng over the final few hundred miles on the way into Newport, so much so that we haven’t been more than five miles behind them which is incredibly close after the distance we’ve sailed.
That’s meant relentless pressure and even though you might be off-watch, the call could come at any moment that we’re getting ready to tack or gybe. A 30-minute routine of shifting gear bags and sails follows and as we get closer to our quarry, this intensity only increases.
But it paid off and we drew level to set-up a match-race for the finishing-line with either of us likely to win the leg.
The weather forecast models predicted a complete shut-down of wind 150 miles from the finish but this didn’t happen and we were speeding along at 20 knots until gradually the wind eased but we still managed to keep almost 12 knots of boatspeed.
To be honest, a second place to Dongfeng for this leg would be bearable. Our plan hasn’t changed from aiming for a podium result in all nine stages. We haven’t been off the podium yet and Dongfeng’s dismasting in the Southern Ocean means we have a seven-point advantage over them before the result of this leg is counted.
Win outright
With just three legs remaining, provided we keep within one place of them, we should be in good shape to keep first overall and win outright. That will significantly alter our approach plus the next leg to Lisbon could be just seven days so the margin for trying clever moves will be reduced.
We’ll also have the full fleet in Lisbon when Chris Nicholson and the Vestas team return with a rebuilt boat after their near catastrophic grounding in the Indian Ocean. They’ll have a fresh crew, almost new sails and will be hungry to deliver results.
The extra seventh boat could easily mean they slip in between us and Dongfeng so our seven-point lead could steadily become eroded as one third of the overall race points remain to be scored.
But that’s still down the track and right now we have a match-race with Caudrelier plus the prospect that Bouwe Bekking could slip ahead of us both and upset the stakes .
Nothing can ever be taken for granted. We can’t even begin to think about the next leg or the one after that. This race is won by sailing one leg at a time. But the old adage of sailing one watch at a time also holds true and will do for the next seven weeks until we reach Gothenburg.
