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Volvo Ocean Race 2008/2009
Leg 5 Qingdao - Rio
www.volvooceanrace.org -
Übersicht Leg5
Friday 13 February 2009 07:30 GMT
Pressekonferenz in Quingdao
Torben Grael was smiling, Ian Walker was laughing, Ken Read was excited and Bouwe Bekking was animated. Eivind Melleby, standing in for his busy Ericsson 3 colleagues, was talking about peeing in the wind.
It’s hard to talk about the calm before the storm when 30-knot breezes are battering the Qingdao race village, but at the skippers’ gathering today it was difficult to detect any burdening tension.
In fact, the atmosphere was so cordial it was possible to imagine tomorrow as the start of a weekend regatta, not the beginning of the longest, possibly most tricky, leg in the history of this race.
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“Why waste energy now?” Telefonica Blue’s Bekking reasoned afterwards. “We’ve got enough coming up and we need to be as strong as possible.”
To that end, he declared himself “100% fit and recovered” from the buttock injury that left him in his bunk for much of leg four. Likewise, PUMA’s Ken Read insisted it would take more than a mangled finger and some doubts to keep him from sailing 12,300 nautical miles to Rio de Janeiro.
“I relied on a couple of doctors, who were big helps, and then my wife finally said ‘I will not be able to bear you for the next 40 days if you don’t go on this leg’. She said ‘your sorry ass is going on that boat’. It (his finger) is very sensitive to cold, which isn’t perfect for this leg, but I should be okay.”
“Okay” is fine for a finger, but the strategists will need to be better than okay. This leg, with its Pacific sailing, equator crossing, scoring gate dilemmas, trade winds, Southern Ocean and Cape Horn is widely believed to be the most complex on the track.
“I’d say it is,” said Ericsson 4’s Grael. “There is a lot to consider and a lot of big decisions.”
“I’d agree with that,” added Bekking. “There will be a lot more to it than boat speed.”
And therein lays one of the most exciting aspects of this leg. Bekking has shoved Telefonica Blue right back into the running in this race, winning the last two legs. But Blue’s boat speed famously came off badly against Ericsson 4 in heavy downwind running in the first leg and similar conditions are expected this time. To combat the issue Bekking has given up three points – taking his tally to 42, seven adrift of leaders Ericsson 4 – to change to bigger rudders. He expects the improved performance in running and reaching to be beneficial, but admits he doesn’t know if it will be sufficient to put them on an even footing with Grael’s craft.
“I think they are still the boat to beat,” he said. “But let’s hope we can cause a surprise and hang in there. We made huge improvements on the second leg and know with the bigger rudders we can make another step. Is it enough? We still don’t know. But if we make the right decisions and sail the boat well we will be pretty tough to beat.”
Grael, for one, is taking the Blue threat seriously. “They are a very competitive team and I think they will improve their performance,” he said. “They have shown in the last couple of legs that they are a very strong team and we have to work very hard to beat them. PUMA are also very strong.”
Indeed, Read is excited about the forthcoming leg. “There is so much to look forward to,” he said. “We have the team and the boat to win a leg and there’s no reason why we can’t win this one.”
Grael was certainly in no mood to rest on his laurels, especially with the potential of a winning team to collect 16 points from this leg. “At this stage of the race if you sail too conservatively you probably will not win,” he added. “You have to balance risk with return, but we have to keep on beating them. There are a lot of points at stake.”
Less emphasis will be placed on beating his 24-hour distance world record of 596.6 miles. “Every record is eventually broken one day,” Grael said. “We saw it broken more than once in the last race so it could happen here as well. The Southern Ocean, in theory, could be a good place to do it. We’re going to be further north because of ice so I don’t know if that will influence it or not. It’s too early to say.
“If you go for the record and you’re not sailing a leg in a race you can look for the conditions. But when you’re sailing a race, you’re more interested in winning the race than making a record.”
Another key point of focus is the well-being of the boats. Two have already been ruled out of leg five because of damage in the last, while Ericsson 3 is battling to reach the start-line at the same time as her rivals. This leg, with its sheer length – Read believes they will sail closer to 14,000 miles, rather than 12,300 – and the variety of conditions will prove tough.
Walker, the man calling the shots on Green Dragon, said: “It’s going to be long; it’s going to be varied. In terms of our biggest challenges, I’d say that just like in the last leg, we have to finish it.”
Yesterday he was a little more blunt, saying: “The first thing we have to do is get to Rio in good shape and good time and I don’t imagine all the boats will manage to do that.”
Bekking was more optimistic. “I think all the boats will arrive. It’s another thing to lose a rig, and we know there are usually some lost. Structurally all the boats should be fine.”
Thereafter, the skippers dispersed. They were all smiling, posing for pictures and signing autographs. The metaphorical gloves don’t come off until tomorrow.
13.02.2009 - Pressekonferenz in Qingdao
12.02.2009 - PUMA gear up for longest ever leg of Volvo Ocean Race
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