The worst is yet to come

From Next magazine issue 4/2001. Text by Kirsi Crowley

Amer Sports's boats will encounter icebergs and twenty-meter waves as they head south on the 6550 mile leg from Cape Town to Sydney. The Southern Ocean is undoubtedly the most demanding leg of the Volvo Ocean Race. Amer Sports One arrived in Cape Town second and Amer Sports Too eighth. But that could all change on the voyage.

We sail the great circle course from here to Australia. The great circle is a straight line on the globe. It goes down to a latitude of 49.5 degrees past Kergeulen Island, which lies about half way between Cape Town and the south-eastern tip of Australia. Whether we go north or south of that island depends on the weather. But the leg is tricky because of high pressure close to Australia. You can be miles behind and still catch up if the boats ahead hit a high," says Grant Dalton, the experienced skipper of Amer Sports One. "Weather-wise it is probably the worst leg of the race. There is a patch between Kergeulen Island and the bottom of Australia where the average wind speed is 37 knots. Sometimes it is lighter, but normally it blows like hell," says Dalton.

Fine performance

Lisa McDonald, the skipper of the all female crew of Amer Sports Too, was still testing her boat on the sparkling sea off Cape Town on the day before the restart. On the first leg the crew got the feel of the Bruce Farr designed boat in upwind conditions. On the second leg it will be time to make friends with the spinnaker.

"It is a desolate part of the world - very cold, very wet and quite rough at times. A few of us have been in the Southern Ocean before, so we hope to pass on some tips to the girls who haven't been there before." The crews of Amer Sports' boats have done well considering that the other crews have had at least a year to perfect their teamworking skills. The male crew of Amer Sports One only got together in May - June, and the female crew of Amer Sports Too a month later. Lisa McDonald is far from discouraged by their performance on the first leg.

"We missed the weather pattern with two other boats, but we kept up with those boats for 3500 miles, which is a very long time. We only finished a few hours behind one of them and these crews have been together for years. We have been together for two months, so I think that's quite a good achievement."

McDonald's crew has thirteen members, one more than the other crews. The extra member brought much needed strength and weight. Good team spirit certainly put wind in their sails.

"The crew is great, fantastic. It is one of the best crews in the world I reckon. It is very hard to keep people motivated for 38 days, especially when you are sailing up wind all the time. But because we were close to other boats, we had a full-on race every day. So we were in very good spirits."

Half broken

A veteran of round-the-world racing, Grant Dalton would have been happy with fourth place due to the short preparation time. Experience certainly helped on the first leg. The team is still learning about the boat so it is too early to assess its performance.

"This is a leg where reliability is even more important than on the first leg, because the boat will be subjected to lots more strain. You can break anything on these boats just like in a racing car. And you basically have to break everything once before you get it right. We have only broken 50 per cent of the stuff so far, so there are still a lot more faults that we haven't spotted yet. Hopefully, the key failures are behind us and sorted out," explains Grant Dalton.

"The boat is important. If you have a really good crew and a slow boat, you get beaten. If you have a really fast boat and slow crew, you can do OK. In the end a good crew always has a fast boat because they know how to prepare it."

In Cape Town there is no time to rest. Lisa McDonald's crew tries to prepare the boat for the rough weather it will face. She says that you have to be sensible when sailing the Southern Ocean.

"Our strategy is top secret," laughs McDonald, who believes that previous experience of the Southern Ocean will stand them in good stead. Team spirit is an important element of their strategy.

"In sailing you get immediate feedback on your performance. You know when you have done something well and when you haven't. And doing things well, perfecting manoeuvres and sail changes, and generally getting the best out of the boat is what drives everyone in the competition."

World's most expensive spoons

Carrying enough but not too much food on board is a delicate balancing act. On the first leg Lisa McDonald's crew managed the longer-than-expected journey time with the meals they did not eat in the Bay of Biscay. Grant Dalton's crew has not had much of an appetite since leaving Cape Town. On the first leg it was difficult to eat, because four spoons were accidentally thrown overboard with the dish water.

"We only have spoons because the food is liquid. We had to eat with something after loosing the spoons. The only thing we could think of that wouldn't affect the performance of the boat was to remove the lenses from spare sunglasses and make spoons out of them. So that is what we did. They were the world's most expensive spoons," chuckles Dalton.

While still in Cape Town, Dalton admitted that the crew had not yet recovered from the first leg of the race. The crews have only one leg of nine behind th em, but they've already sailed a quarter of the total distance. Battling their way to Sydney, the crews will have to make do with eating pasta, freeze-dried meat and potatoes and popping magnesium and mineral pills.

"In this race you never quite recover the fitness level you had at the start. Studies show that the deterioration over a race of this length is comparable to that of a critically ill hospital patient. We have recovered as best we can."

No holding back

Grant Dalton is philosophical about how Illbruck, the first boat into Cape Town, weathered the storm of protest against it.

"I was a little surprised at the outcome of the protest. I expected us to be in first place. But what's done is done. There's no appeals procedure. There's no point dwelling on it; we have to move on. Whether I agree or disagree with the decision doesn't make any difference anyway," says Dalton. Leaving Cape Town, Dalton and his crew will head south into the cold and inhospitable waters of the Southern Ocean. What will be their approach?

"We will take it like every other leg, we will race it. You are prudent only if the boat is in danger, but you have to race it hard all the time. If you don't, because you try to be seaman-like or safety conscious or whatever, you get beaten. You have to go as hard as you can."

"There is nothing pleasant about what we will be doing for the next 3 weeks. It is scary, wet and very cold. You get no sleep and the food is horrible. It's all about passion, the passion of winning. As long as that passion remains, I'll keep doing it until I'm no longer doing it well; then, the question of continuing will already have been decided."