Staff Writer
TEAMS Abu Dhabi Ocean Racing and Team Brunel have left sea salt in the wounds of their competitors as they emerged the winners from the great equatorial Doldrums to take a firm lead in the Volvo Ocean Race.
Having covered more than half of the 6 487 nautical miles to complete the leg between Alicante – off the coast of Spain – to Cape Town, chief executive of World Sport- organisers of the Cape Town stop-over Bruce Parker-Forsyth said the Great Britain and Netherlands teams “already looked to have made it a two-boat sprint” to the finish at the V&A Waterfront in Cape Town, come the first week of November.
“While the rest of the seven-strong fleet were left some 90 miles plus in their wake, searching for the gusts which would finally propel them back into contention, skippers Ian Walker of Abu Dhabi and Bouwe Bekking for Team Brunel were powering clear towards the island of Fernando,” Parker-Forsyth said.
Bekking, a 51-year-old skipper competing in the race for the seventh time, said the only secret to winning is to keep calm and rely on one’s strategy.
“Throwing the dice we hate. We prefer to act on facts and figures. But then I can reflect as well that sometimes ‘luck’ is with you and sometimes against. But in the end it will even out.” Bekking said.
The Volvo Ocean Race, which started in 1973 as the Whitbread Round the World Race, is running for the 12th time this year. The race started on October 11 with teams setting sail from Alicante and is set to finish on June 27 in Gothenburg, Sweden – home of Volvo.
The 38 739-nautical mile route will include stopovers in Cape Town, Abu Dhabi, China, New Zealand, Brazil, America, Portugal and France.
Only four days into the nine months of racing, organisers saw its first casualty with Team Vestas Wind’s Tony Rae having suffered a severe rib injury he sustained during training .
All seven Volvo Ocean Race boats have tasted the lead at least once during five extraordinary days of racing since setting off from Alicante.
On Monday, China’s Dongfeng Race Team took a surprise lead and even a broken rudder has not halted their push towards a first-leg victory in South Africa.
Last Saturday the team were rocked by a “violent impact” when an unidentified object in the mid-Atlantic smashed into their rudder and broke it.
It took the crew two hours to replace the rudder, but despite the hold-up they had regained the lead by the end of the day and smart navigational moves near the Cape Verde Islands stretched their advantage over nearest rivals, Denmark’s Team Vestas Wind.