Sport-heute: Sailing - TELEFÓNICA BLUE LEG TWO DAY 3 QFB: received 17.11.08 0524 GMT

17. November 2008, 23:54

TELEFÓNICA BLUE LEG TWO DAY 3 QFB: received 17.11.08 0524 GMT

GREEN DRAGON LEG TWO DAY 3 QFB: received 17.11.08 0952 GMT

Hi There,

Wow - this leg has gone by fast! It is hard to believe that we are already through our second night at sea - the time has gone by so quickly. Cape Town and all the delights it had to offer are now but a distant memory, many hundreds of miles behind our transom. After 12 good days on shore, it's great to be back out at sea. I'll miss the food though. I think all I did in Cape Town was eat! Sadly, the freeze-dried isn't quite measuring up to the South Africa cuisine although the biltong we have on board is a welcome reminder of the last couple of weeks.

CAPE TOWN - CHOCIN INDIA (mk) It has been tough out here so far, close. We were exchanging tacks for the first day and then in full view of each other as we powered downwind on the second day. With the pressure building though, the fleet is starting to spread out a little and a few of the boats who seem to go well in the big breeze are starting to shine. As for us, maybe this isn't our strongest suit but we are learning to hang in there and are focused on going as well as we can.

On board is wet, but luckily the weather is kind and not too cold and the nights seem short and well lit by the moonlight. Right now, we are being conservative and steady ready to pounce when the conditions start to swing our way...

As for me, life is good, after very little sleep for the first 36 hours, I managed few quality hours in the sleeping bag last night and that seems to have made all the difference. I'm feeling good and looking forward to what lies ahead. For sure, this is going to continue to be the closest of races so it is going to pay to be alert...

Cheers for now,

Simon Fisher - navigator

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GREEN DRAGON LEG TWO DAY 3 QFB: received 17.11.08 0952 GMT

The morning of the start I woke up at 0500, I tried to go back to sleep but it just didn't happen. The sun was shining through my window and I made the most of my final few hours in a nice luxurious bed! I did the final check around my room before leaving, to make sure I hadn't left anything behind, and made my way to the Waterfront. I had packed my bag for Singapore; you have to have a lot of forward planning on this trip. Our containers, which are used by the team at every port, leap frog each other around the globe.

This bags we put in the container in Cape Town will be the bags we will see again in Singapore. ItÂ¹s really important to put the right bag in the right container, there have been a few instances when someone on the team is looking quite frantic and then realises that they have put something fairly important in the wrong container and it is thousands of miles away!

After checking my equipment several times, I was happy I had everything I needed onboard. The time flew by and we were all soon on the dock and awaiting our team song to be played, our names to be announced and the lines to untied. The V&A Waterfront was filled with people coming to see us all off. The crew's families were all there as well, and it was really moving for them all to say goodbye. Saying goodbye to the children was clearly hard for many of team and I know that some of them won't be seeing them again until we arrive in Singapore at Christmas.

The initial forecast showed some perfect weather conditions as we headed south. We face two days of gales and, quite a contrast from the send off we saw in Cape Town, blue skies and hundreds of spectators boats it was truly amazing. For some of the team, the last few days have been long, after breaking the spreader on Thursday the team has been working around the clock to replace it. It was a crucial repair, but we are all very glad that it was completed and that we are once again out here racing with the best of them!

PUMA had a fantastic start off the line, but Table Bay threw in a little surprise for them as they were stopped in their tracks, allowing the fleet to overtake them. Before we knew it, we were waving goodbye to the beautiful Table Mountain, which vanished gradually in the distance. I guess this is goodbye to Cape Town, see you all again in India!

Guo Chuan - Green Dragon MCM

Pictures from VOLVO OCEAN RACE ORGANISATION

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PUMA MAKES A MOVE

This morning at 0810 GMT Ken Read/USA decided to take PUMA further north and spent three hours on port gybe before gybing back again at just after 1100 GMT, dipping behind Ericsson 4 (Torben Grael/USA) Ericsson 3 (Anders Lewander/SWE) and Green Dragon (Ian Walker/GBR) but gaining some valuable northing. The black cat is now just 16 miles south of Telefónica Blue (Bouwe Bekking/NED), which is the furthest north.

Andreas Hanakamp (Team Russia) and Roberto Bermudez, the new skipper onboard Team Delta Lloyd followed suit and gybed. The fleet is spread across a north/south divide of 66 nm between Ericsson 4 in the south and Telefónica Blue in the north.

Being the furthest to the north, Telefónica Blue is showing top of the leaderboard, and PUMA's move to the north has moved her up to second place. Ericsson 3 has recorded the fastest 24-hour run of 495 nm in the past 24 hours, and, over the past hour, has had the highest average speed of 22.5 nm.

Navigator Simon Fisher says that onboard it is pretty wet, but luckily the weather is kind and not too cold and the nights are well lit by the moonlight. 'Right now,' he says, 'we are being conservative and steady, ready to pounce when the conditions start to swing our way.' Fisher, after having very little sleep in the first 36 hours of the leg has had some quality time in his bunk, which he says has made all the difference. 'I'm feeling good and looking forward to what lies ahead. For sure, this is going to continue to be the closet of races, so it is going to pay to be alert.'

The fleet is now out of the worst of the Algulhas current, which runs south down the east coast of South Africa. Over the shallows of the Agulhas Bank, it meets cold water and the westerly winds coming the other way from the Southern Ocean. The result is a notoriously rough piece of water. 'The unpleasant part of the current is that it pressures the waves into strange, unpredictable towers,' said Ericsson 3 skipper Anders Lewander last night. 'The sea looks quite like the lava fields in Lanzarote, but blue and living,' he said.

Some of the teams are suffering from 'flu and it is inevitable that it will spread through the boat. Ken Read (PUMA) says his head is 'killing him', but it is not just 'flu. 'I just smashed it into a winch structure under the deck getting my foul weather gear off. You would think that I would know it was there by now,' he said.

Matt Gregory, the navigator onboard Delta Lloyd is also suffering. 'I've developed a cold over the past two days. It's most likely a reaction to the five immunisation shots that I was required to receive by the racing rules just before we left Cape Town,' he says. 'I have lost my voice, gained a fever, a headache and generally feel awful.' But, he adds that he will keep smiling, encouraging performance and personally trying to find the fastest path to India that he can.

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

Telefónica Blue ESP (Bouwe Bekking/NED) DTF 3928 nm
PUMA Racing Team USA (Ken Read/USA) +6
Telefónica Black ESP (Fernando EchÃ¡varri/ESP) +11
Ericsson 3 SWE (Anders Lewander/SWE) +14
Green Dragon IRL/CHN (Ian Walker/GBR) +17
Ericsson 4 SWE (Torben Grael/BRA) +30
Delta Lloyd IRL (Roberto Bermudez/ESP) +56
Team Russia RUS (Andreas Hanakamp/AUT) +60

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GREEN DRAGON LEG TWO DAY 3 QFB: received 17.11.08 1553

Conditions have progressively got harder over the last 24 hours as we head towards the Southern Ocean. For Green Dragon things were getting better. At 10 am we crossed ahead of Puma by about 6 miles as they gybed North East and we recorded the longest distance in the latest position report.

Our sail combination was obviously fast although we were on the edge with the spinnaker up in over 30 knots. You can tell down below when things are about to go wrong and I was just getting my waterproofs on when there was a huge bang and the boat went into an involuntary Chinese gybe. You might think this is al lright for a boat with such strong Chinese connections but a Chinese gybe is what we all fear most as it is when the boat crash gybes and leaves you on your side with everything including the keel on the wrong side.

As the mainsail hit the weather runners, water started pouring in down below through the ventilation hatches due to the side decks now being underwater, but the boat miraculously turned back the right way, gybed back and righted itself. Everyone's immediate reaction was that we had broken the rudder, but as it turned out the steering blocks had sheared away down below leaving Neal with no steerage on the weather wheel.

As the boat speared out of control Anthony Merrington (aka Youngster) managed to grab the leeward wheel just in time and straighten us up. Able to steer from only the leeward wheel we managed to drop the spinnaker and affect an immediate repair. Everyone was harnessed on and everything secure so no harm was done. Tom Braidwood, Damian Foxall and Justin Slattery didn't hesitate to drill right through the hull and secure a new block. Fortunately the only real cost was perhaps 5-10 miles and we are now back up and running with another bar story to tell. I should point out that Damian has never sailed from Cape Town without having to turn back into Port Elizabeth in all his previous Volvo races so we still can't relax unless the jinx returns. I thought it had.

Ian Walker - skipper

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