Sport-heute: Sailing - Ericcson 4 führt den Pack an!

01. März 2009, 21:47

Ericcson 4 führt den Pack an!

Vom Ersten bis zu Letzten sind nur 58 Meilen Distanz.

Ericcson 4 hat durch ihre clevere Linienführung nach Osten die Führung wieder übernommen. Doch alle Boote liegen innerhalb 58 Meilen. Und das Wetter ist wunderschön, die Fiji Inseln rücken in die Ferne und alle haben jetzt genug Zeit ihre Lieblingsspeisen zu essen und endlich einen feinen Capuccino zu trinken. Auf allen Booten herrscht Windstille und das Meer ist Spiegelglatt.

Brüttisellen, 1.3.09 (mk) Die Originalberichte von den Yachten

ERICSSON 4: LEADER OF THE PACK

After negotiating the two islands that make up Fiji yesterday, the pack was split in its decision to go east, west or straight between the islands. Today, as the islands fade into the distance, Ericsson 4 (Torben Grael/BRA), who chose an easterly course along with Green Dragon (Ian Walker/GBR) and Ericsson 3 (Magnus Olsson/SWE) is back at the top of the pack as the fleet heads south towards New Zealand.

Unfortunately for the New Zealanders in the crew, and there are 10 of them, five of whom make up the Ericsson 4 crew, there will be no stop in New Zealand for the Volvo Ocean Race this time, which is causing some anxiety among the crews. Ian Walker has hidden the passports onboard Green Dragon in case his two, Andrew McClean and Chris Main, make a swim for it.

“There was already some talk of swimming ashore as we sailed through the islands off the eastern tip of Fiji, so we will have to stay out of swimming range of the New Zealand coast,” he said.

Onboard Ericsson 4, the crew are relieved as, once again, they become the southernmost boat in the fleet. A milestone onboard today has been passing the ‘8,000 nm to go’ point. “It’s funny to hear the guys saying ‘only 8,000 miles to go’. Our minds must be bending a little out here as 8,000 nm is still a very long way to go,” wrote Ericsson 4’s bowman Ryan Godfrey. “The breeze is still pretty light and I suspect that we are falling behind all our earlier routing runs. One upside of this is that I am now secretly confident that my Cape Horn ETA bet is looking good, as it is one of the later dates.

Throughout the fleet, everyone onboard is happy and relaxed as the breeze has settled and the boats are rolling along on an endless port tack at around 14 knots.

Two crew are particularly happy: Magnus Olsson, skipper of Ericsson 3, is happy because he is a coffee addict. All the food bags onboard his boat seemed to contain just pre-packed cappuccinos and small bags with ready mixed coffee and Magnus wanted the ‘real stuff’, with no sugar or anything else added. For days, MCM Gustav Morin rummaged through almost half their food bags, but no real coffee. After 15 days at sea, 18 for most of the crew, Magnus had got used to it, but yesterday, when Gustav opened a bag he hadn’t looked in before, there it was. Magnus celebrated. The other happy skipper is Ian Walker, for almost the same reason, except that he wanted powered milk so he could have a nice cup of tea, and this, at last, has come to light.

But, onboard PUMA (Ken Read/USA) in second place, MCM Rick Deppe, is not happy. In fact, he’s pretty grumpy, having been wakened from his nice sleeping place on a beanbag in a cool corner at the back of the boat, when the wind went light and the crew needed to move the weight forward. Rick declined the offer of sleeping on a wet sail forward of the mast next to the rubbish bags and instead thought a cup of tea would be just the thing.

“I head off to the galley only to discover that we are out of tea bags for the next couple of days. In theory, I am the only tea drinker on the boat and I am allocated three bags per day. The problem is that other people tend to become tea drinkers the moment they step on board,” he said. He settled for coffee on deck and, at 0310, he was cheered up by the beauty of the night. “The wind was blowing around nine knots and the sea was perfectly flat, subsequently no splashing at all – a very rare occurrence on a Volvo 70. This fact alone was enough to cheer me up. The coffee was warm and tasted great and I had had a brilliant 45 minutes up on the foredeck, and no-one even knew I was there.”

Onboard Telefónica Blue, the team has been celebrating navigator Tom Addis’ 39th birthday with a small bottle of wine and some macadamia nuts. “A small sip of wine was a treat to the palette after water-maker water for so many days for sure,” said helmsman Simon Fisher.

The theme of food continues to Ericsson 4, where the crew has been amusing themselves with a ‘pea-throwing’ competition. “We have an abundance of what we thought were wasabi coated peas, but something was lost in our Chinese and we ended up with peas covered in an unknown and flavourless coating,” explains Ryan Godfrey. The crew is now seeing who can throw a pea and get it through the 30mm mainsail clew ring from a distance of four metres.. “It is harder than it sounds as the apparent wind has to be taken into consideration,” says Ryan. So far, only one pea has made it through the ring, thrown by Brad Jackson. “There is some doubt if it went through as he claims it did,” Godfrey added.

Onboard Ericsson 3, the crew is preparing for the Southern Ocean and being more vigilant with their eating, sleeping and adhering to the watch system properly. “We can’t afford the guys to be burned out and sick after the first part of the leg and not be 100 per cent when we reach the Southern Ocean,” says Gustav Morin. The team believes they will put in a strong performance in the Southern Ocean, provided they stay in shape.

The flat water and medium wind speeds, with few sail changes, is allowing the crews to sleep well on their off watch and recharge their batteries in preparation for what is ahead. “We may have done 5,000 nm, but this leg has hardly started,” said Ian Walker.

Ericsson 4 has 570nm to run until she is level with the northernmost point of New Zealand. They are 780 nm from the northwestern tip and 682 nm due north of the latitude 36 scoring gate. The fleet is currently split across an east/west divide of approximately 45 nm with Telefónica Blue the westernmost boat in the fleet and Ericsson 4 in the east.

Leg Five Day 16: 1300 GMT Volvo Ocean Race Positions
(boat name/country/skipper/nationality/distance to finish)

Ericsson 4 SWE (Torben Grael/BRA) DTF 7,841 nm
PUMA Racing Team USA (Ken Read/USA) +18
Ericsson 3 SWE (Magnus Olsson/SWE) +27
Telefónica Blue ESP (Bouwe Bekking/NED) +50
Green Dragon IRL/CHI (Ian Walker/GBR) +58

Delta Lloyd IRL (Roberto Bermudez/ESP) DNS
Telefónica Black ESP (Fernando Echávarri/ESP) DNS
Team Russia RUS (Andreas Hanakamp/AUT) DNS

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ERICSSON 3 LEG FIVE DAY 16 QFB: received 01.03.09 1208 GMT

Stay in shape

We are making good way down towards New Zealand now, sailing with around 120 true wind direction in speeds between 13 and 18 knots.

During this leg we all have to be a bit more thoughtful with eating, sleeping and sticking to the watch system properly. We can’t afford the guys to burned out and sick after the first part of the leg and not being 100 per cent when we reach the Southern Ocean where the big stuff starts to go down. I think we can be really strong down there, if we manage to stay in shape.

Unlike the earlier legs we so far, touch wood, we haven’t had any bad injuries onboard. If you go through the old videos from Ericsson 3 you’ll see what doctor Richard Masons ‘No mercy medical clinic’ has been dealing with since the start. It has been a broken teeth, concussions, open wounds in hands, taking of nails after fingers been stuck in the runners, curing stomach illness and taping up bleeding heads.

Maybe it is all about Mason, because now, when he is having a pause on this leg, it has been pretty calm on the injury front. Only some sore ribs and twisted ankles from being washed around in the cockpit the first tough days of reaching.

We also have some coughing going on and a light eye infection. But it is nothing to worry about and our stand in doctor, Martin Krite, is very happy about that.

“I’m just crossing my fingers that, I from now on, I only have to open the orange box for finding fungus powder, which is unavoidable”, he says

Gustav Morin - MCM

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PUMA LEG FIVE DAY 16 QFB: received 01.03.09 0111 GMT

Woke up grumpy this morning, or perhaps I should say - I got woken up and it made me grumpy...... ‘Rick, it’s getting light (the wind) we need to get weight forward.... you can’t sleep there’, (curled up on a bean bag in a nice drafty corner at the back of the boat), ‘we’re trying to win a yacht race here........’

I'd been up all night shooting video of our little tactical gamble to sail between the Fijian Islands rather than around as all of our competition except Telefónica Blue had opted to do..... Will it work? We'll find out long after I've sent this blog. After the Islands we will be set up with a fair amount of east/west separation as the boats line up for the scoring gate at NZ.

So back to me and my bad mood, once woken up I decided that there was no way I could get back to sleep in my now agitated state, especially with the offer I had received to sleep up in the cooling breeze under the forward hatch on a soft sail..... It’s like those rip-off holiday brochures..... What they didn't mention was that the sail would be soaking wet and my head would be next to a 10 day old trash bag! OK so what should I do? No way am I spending another minute on the computer for now, are my eyes going square! ......... There's nothing much happening on deck by the sound of things, I have all the night time footage that I need for the time being and, oh yes, the batteries are flat on the camera light anyway. Are you getting the picture here.... I don't work well when I'm in a bad mood.

My watch is reading 1510 hrs. That’s ten past three in the afternoon, but the physical time right now on the boat is 0310 hrs, that’s ten past three in the morning. We are exactly 180 degrees on the opposite side of the world from the United Kingdom so the time just sort of flips itself... why are we running on UK time or GMT? Because we will sail so much distance to the east and thru so many time zones on this leg, it makes it easier to find a time that is constant and run with that, all of our instrumentation and scheduling from Volvo also operates on GMT as well.

Cup of tea....I head off to the galley only to discover that we are out of tea bags for the next couple of days, in theory I'm the only tea drinker on the boat and I get allocated three bags per day!! Problem is that other people tend to become tea drinkers the moment they step on a boat! Oh well, I'll have a coffee. It will be my first of the trip. Mug in hand I stick my head out of the hatch to see what’s going on....... I am greeted by the most glorious starry sky imaginable, so I quickly decided that I would chill out and drink my coffee on deck ...... Hot drinks on deck are not explicitly banned, but they most certainly are frowned upon by some, but not others, on our boat. It's really dark so no-one will see me, so I sort of hide the cup inside my silhouette and head to the bow and the comfort and safety of an A4 spinnaker.

Once in position I could begin to really appreciate what a fantastic night it was. The Fijian Islands were upwind of us about 30 miles but there was still the unmistakeable smell of soil and vegetation on the wind, I thought of our emergency stop at the Philippines on the last leg and the way a 12 hour stop had actually caused us to catch the leaders. The wind was blowing around nine knots and the sea was perfectly flat, subsequently no splashing at all.... a very rare occurrence on a Volvo 70.... This fact alone is enough to cheer me up. The coffee is warm and tastes great, I have a brilliant 45 minutes up there, and no-one even knows I'm there. I'm now feeling refreshed and awake so I head down and clean my mug and the galley..

The sun is starting to poke its nose out of the horizon to the west; I should probably get to work........

Rick Deppe MCM

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GREEN DRAGON LEG FIVE DAY 16 QFB: received 01.03.09 0915 GMT

Fiji has been and gone and it is now clear that boats in the east like ourselves and Ericsson 4 did well going east and boats in the west like Telefónica did well going west.

It must have been very difficult for the more central boats to decide what to do and so Ericsson 3 and Puma separated and took different options from being within sight of each other. Amazingly enough it looks as though in a few more hours they are likely to come back together in sight of each other once again. I suspect Puma and Telefónica are very relieved to have got through the gap as cleanly as they could have easily been stuck in no wind so close to land - it was certainly a risky route and I applaud them for taking it on.

We had few choices to make being so far east and felt a little hard done by not to have crossed one or both of the Ericsson boats as they tacked onto starboard. It was certainly on the cards until a big right shift let them across our bow in the last 100 miles. For now it has been great just to feel we are back in the race. It is quite amazing that, after 5000, miles the whole fleet are within 50 miles, or four hours sailing of each other.

We are now heading due south towards New Zealand which is causing some anxiety with the two kiwis onboard. There was already some talk of swimming ashore as we sailed through the islands off the eastern tip of Fiji so we will have to stay out of swimming range of the NZ coast. I have hidden the passports just in case.

I have to say it is a real shame we are not stopping in Auckland. To sail so close and not visit the City of Sails is sacrilege. The New Zealand public love sailing and this race in particular. Hopefully the race organisers will add it back in next time and break up this monster leg.

Back onboard all is well. It is super flat water and medium winds with fast reaching sails up. I cannot remember such a prolonged period where you have not had to hang on with both hands to move around the boat. It is also unusually quiet and with few sail changes it makes for perfect sleeping conditions to recharge the batteries before all that lies ahead.

In the short term that is a difficult transition through light winds into strong South easterly winds, followed in the longer term by the Southern Ocean and Cape Horn. We may have done 5000 miles but this leg has hardly started!

If you are wondering why I am in such a good mood about all this it is because we have found some powdered milk at last so I can now enjoy a nice cup of tea!

Ian Walker - skipper

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