Volvo Ocean Race - Leg 8 - Life At The Extreme

                                PAUL TODD - Volvo Ocean Race

Hard charging Groupama dominated the Oeiras In-Port Race, an upwind/downwind drag race along the narrow Tagus River in front the ancient, white-stoned city of Lisbon. Telefónica recklessly fouled PUMA at the start and the Spanish boat ended up finishing last yet again. PUMA’s wily skipper Ken Read pulled a rabbit out of his hat at the next to last mark, smoking the rest of the fleet out of nowhere and finishing second, followed by a very disappointed CAMPER.

                                PAUL TODD - Volvo Ocean Race

            As PUMA was leaving the dock in Lisbon to begin the 1,950 leg around the Azore Islands to Lorient, France, cagy skipper Ken Read chuckled, “Groupama are not going to feel very secure up there – they know there’s a lot of racing left.”

                                     IAN ROMAN - Volvo Ocean Race

            PUMA nailed the brisk downwind start and led the pack out of Lisbon, with Groupama trailing in last.

            But it was a different story when the fleet entered the Atlantic, reaching in ideal conditions. PUMA headed southeast, hoping to have a good angle when they turned north. And by the first night Telefónica had stormed into the lead, followed closely by Groupama who both took the more direct northerly route toward Sao Miguel Island which sits in the middle of the Azores High, an area of little wind. The island functioned as a mark and the boats parked up when they approached the rounding.

                                             Andres Soriano - Team Sanya

            “There’s big gains and losses to be made getting around the island,” said CAMPER skipper Chris Nicholson, “and then it’s a pretty fast trip if you keep it all in one piece.”

                                             Yann Riou - Groupama Sailing Team

            He was referring to the 30 to 40 knot gale force winds and 18-foot seas waiting around the bend once the boats cleared Sao Miguel. How hard a skipper was willing to push crew and boat in such dangerous downwind conditions could well determine victory or total disaster.

                                             Hamish Cooper -Camper ETNZ

            With the top three boats in sight of one another as they rounded the island and started blasting north toward some truly evil weather, Ken Read sounded the alarm. “It’s becoming do or die for us. We really need to be more apt to taking risks at this stage in the game than we were in the beginning.”

            The first boat to break was Groupama when they tried to reef their mainsail in advance of the approaching storm and found that it was jammed at the top, forcing daredevil Kiwi bowman Brad Marsh to climb the bucking mast three times in rough seas in order to fix the problem, dropping them from second to fourth in the course of the two hour repair job.

                                             Yann Riou - Groupama Sailing Team

            Dancing the razor’s edge between triumph and disaster Telefónica powered into the lead by setting the Schaffhausen Speed Record Challenge with a 564-mile run over 24 hours, and then tumbled when one of their rudders broke, dropping them to third.

                                            IAN ROMAN - Volvo Ocean Race

            Leg 8 finally came down to one incredibly dangerous maneuver: gybing in the middle of a roaring Atlantic storm in the dark. And timing was going to be everything.

            “This gybe is going to be super crucial – it will decide the winner,” said Andrew Cape, the navigator aboard Telefónica.

                                              PAUL TODD - Volvo Ocean Race

            The dead man’s gybe boiled down to one simple question: How deep was a skipper prepared to take their boat into the gnashing teeth of the fierce storm in order to maximize the wind angle for the final screaming gliderun into Lorient?

            “It’s pretty full on,” said PUMA’s navigator Tom Addis. “It’s a bit like playing chicken really.”

                                              Armory Ross - PUMA Ocean Racing

            At this point, sails were ripping on all of the boats and the crews were too wasted to even eat. They would grind and then sleep for four hours, and then it was back into wave world for more grinding.

                                               Hamish Cooper -Camper ETNZ

            The lead boat Telefónica was the first boat to turn east and disaster soon struck for the second time. A rogue wave hit them out of nowhere in the crazy seas and they suddenly went into a Chinese gybe and the starboard rudder snapped, leaving them crippled and dashing their hopes of an amazing comeback victory.

                                               IAN ROMAN - Volvo Ocean Race

            After winning the first three legs of the Volvo Ocean Race and looking virtually unbeatable, Skipper Iker Martinez sounded heartbroken. “I would like to say sorry from the bottom of my heart … I think the only thing that makes me feel better is knowing that I have given one hundred percent to this for the past two years."         

                                               PAUL TODD - Volvo Ocean Race

                                              PAUL TODD - Volvo Ocean Race

The fire hose conditions made for survival mode sailing and Groupama surged back into the lead with 200 miles to go, making it a battle for second between CAMPER, who had taken back the 24-hour speed record with a run of 565 miles, followed closely by PUMA.

With a hundred miles to the finish, the sun rose over the Bay of Biscay and live feeds started coming in from the boats. And they were sobering sights indeed, watching giant waves come crashing over the bow, bashing eyeballs and completely inundating the boats with water as the helmsmen struggled to hold onto the wheel and keep the boats on track. The guys on the bow looked and moved like astronauts walking on the moon and it was beyond scary.

                                              Armory Ross - PUMA Ocean Racing
http://www.volvooceanrace.com/en/news/6573_Short-fast-and-brutal.html

And as a fitting end, Groupama sailed to a raucous victory in their home port of Lorient, escorted by hundreds of proud local sailors blasting the French boat’s theme song “Highway To Hell”. And CAMPER edged out PUMA for a well-earned second place finish on a rainy day along the Brittany Coast.

                                              PAUL TODD - Volvo Ocean Race

Next Stop: Galway, Ireland

                                              IAN ROMAN - Volvo Ocean Race

                              VOLVO OCEAN RACE SCOREBOARD

                                                Leg 8 Total

GROUPAMA                             219

PUMA                                       196

CAMPER                                  191

Telefónica                    191

Abu Dhabi                    122

SANYA                          34

                                      Yann Riou - Groupama Sailing Team

Volvo Ocean Race - Leg 7 - Transatlantic Troubles

                             Nick Dana - Abu Dhabi Ocean Racing

                Ian Walker and the crafty vets aboard Abu Dhabi once again showed their mastery of short-handed, close track, in-port sailing by battling Groupama neck-and-neck the entire race just off-shore of glittering South Beach in fluky, dying-wind conditions. PUMA stole third from Camper in a photo finish. And Telefónica managed to shoot itself in the foot yet again after grabbing the lead at the first windward mark, getting rolled after sailing off-shore and getting pounded by the current, and hitting the next-to-last mark after desperately trying to squeeze in a floundering leeward tack, forcing them it to do a penalty turn which doomed them to last, thus allowing all of her rivals to close the points gap.

                Abu Dhabi continued its mastery of Miami by leading the pack on its 3,590-mile leg to Lisbon against a stiff north wind and the 3-knot Gulf Stream.

                                    Paul Todd - VOR

“There’s nothing like going upwind in the Gulf Stream and slamming into a big swell,” said PUMA watch captain Tony Mutter.

                               Armory Ross - PUMA Ocean Racing

Normally, the quickest route to Europe is not the most direct. Previous Volvo winners have sailed up the coast of North America  to the top of Maine, where an iceberg exclusion zone marks the northern limit of the race course, and then slingshot east to Europe. But that strategy went out the window when Tropical Storm Alberto rolled in off the coast of Georgia offering a narrow window of opportunity for any boat that could catch a ride on its powerful winds all the way to the Azores.

                                Armory Ross - PUMA Ocean Racing

That was a nice plan, but when TS Alberto unexpectedly turned, the smooth downwind sailing at the storm’s edge turned into everyone but Groupama’s worst nightmare. The French boat gybed before trouble hit and this time the move handed them a 70-mile lead on PUMA.

                                  Armory Ross - PUMA Ocean Racing

Abu Dhabi Ocean Racing skipper Ian Walker described the frustrating struggle.

“The whole fleet with the exception of Groupama were caught out when the tropical depression Alberto changed course and moved south east over the top of us. We were trying to ride the windshift and extra wind just to the south of it but a violent windshift headed us straight into the eye of the storm. We came off some terrible waves. And the lightning was crashing all around right down to the water and it didn’t seem possible our carbon mast could avoid a direct strike.”

                              Nick Dana - Abu Dhabi Ocean Racing

Alberto finally drifted north and the fleet headed east, enjoying some fast downwind sailing. At this point, the fleet had separated by about 40 miles with Telefónica farthest to the north and Camper to the south. Groupama and PUMA took the middle lane.

                               Yann Riou - Groupama Racing Team

But the North Atlantic is always unpredictable and the models showed several options – and trap doors - ahead.

                            Nick Dana - Abu Dhabi Ocean Racing

Will Oxley, the frazzled old navigator on Camper agonized. “…there is a big high about to roll down over the top of us. The routing is showing two quite dramatically different solutions right now. If you are slow you need to bug out now and go well north to get above the high pressure that’s coming in from Canada. If you are fast enough you can slip through to the Azores high and play the edge of that with the front.”

                                          Hamish Cooper - CAMPER ETNZ

The next guest to the party was a big high pressure system of light winds dropping down from Newfoundland. Camper was the first to tack north toward the land of the icebergs, followed by PUMA and Sanya. The lead boats Telefónica and Groupama , along with Abu Dhabi, decided to try and continue east and sail around the bottom of the new game changer.

                                   Yann Riou - Groupama Racing Team

But after a few days, the Newfoundland High convinced the southern boats to tack north in order to escape its windless grip.

                                   Armory Ross - PUMA Ocean Racing

“For a few days we have clung to the hope that we could just about ride the southwesterly wind east and connect with the westerly flow round the Azores High that would deliver us to Lisbon,” skipper Ian Walker aboard Abu Dhabi said. “It was a dream scenario – a very direct and downwind route that avoided the ice gates to the north.”

                                   Yann Riou - Groupama Sailing Team

And so, the nightmare began as the fleet slogged its way ever north, searching for breeze along the meandering edges of the Gulf Stream in the frigid North Atlantic. Following the race tracker GPS showed six boats heading east, then north, then east, then north, climbing steadily into the land of the ice and snow. No one slept. There was barely time to even eat. The wind constantly shifted – sometimes as much as 60 degrees – forcing all hands to dash up on-deck to change the sails in a chaotic scramble, wearing all of their bulky foul weather gear.

                                Hamish Cooper - CAMPER ETNZ

Amory Ross aboard PUMA said. “Everyone’s crisscrossing around out here and the first boat free will likely have a large advantage as forecasts are calling for fast downwind conditions, but the weather isn’t going according to schedule and we’re still searching for a sign of the system’s northern boundary.”

                         Nick Dana - Abu Dhabi Ocean Racing

Abu Dhabi was the first boat to find the strong westerlies that rocketed them toward Lisbon, followed by PUMA and Camper. Now it was straight line, fast, downwind sailing with one final light wind road block remaining about 200 miles from the finish.

 Nick Dana - Abu Dhabi Ocean Racing

In what was one of the closest Volvo finishes, and after twelve days of intense racing, Abu Dhabi squeaked out a six minute victory over Groupama (the new overall race leader), followed by PUMA.

                                              IAN ROMAN - VOR

Next Stop: Lorient, France

                VOLVO OCEAN RACE SCOREBOARD

GROUPAMA          183

Telefónica           180

PUMA                   171

CAMPER                162

Abu Dhabi          104

SANYA                 32