Ger O’Rourke said, “It’s been a big learning curve and it’s not going to come overnight. I’m looking at this as a stepping stone for 2011. We’re learning how to improve every day. When the Russians passed us, the crew morale dropped a bit, but we were happy we could keep racing (despite the mast damage). It was quite a good repair we made at sea and from that point of view, we’re happy to have sailed her here, we’ll repair her and we’ll be faster and wiser next time.”
Matt Gregory, navigator said, “We collected a lot of data on this leg and we’ll take that and figure out some new sail crossovers and polar tables for the boat. We’ve broken some things and we have a big job list. I might go for a little wine tour tomorrow and then it’s straight back into it. We still have to figure out how to get to India. Nobody on board has every done that before!”
Team Delta Lloyd now ties with Team Russia, four points all, but the tie is broken in favour of Delta Lloyd who has more consistently higher results across the in-port race and the first leg.
Team Delta Lloyd’s entry into the 10th Volvo Ocean Race was only confirmed on 11 September 2008. One month exactly to the start of leg one. Where their competitors had been preparing and training for several years, O’Rourke’s team had just days. Ger O’Rourke had acquired the winning boat from the previous Volvo and completely refitted it to bring it in line with the demands of this year’s event. The full race crew was not formally announced until the crew arrived in the start port of Alicante, a day and a half before the official opening of the race village.
At the time, O’Rourke said, “I don’t imagine we will be super competitive in the first leg because we need more time to learn about this boat, but, by the second and third legs, I think we can be up to speed.”
The 6,500 nautical mile leg from Alicante to Cape Town was certainly a proving ground, with tactical decisions to be made early on in the course, particularly in the Gibraltar Straits and negotiation the Canary Islands and the Cape Verde Islands. The weather Gods threw everything they could think of at the fleet including strong currents, oily calms, high winds and huge seas, and Team Delta Lloyd negotiated it all in fine style.
With no time or budget to order new sails, Delta Lloyd has sailed this leg with their first and final generation sails, while some teams have used generation four and five sails. Ger O’Rourke says the boat is still competitive, particularly in heavy airs where the square metres of sails they have may be the deciding factor rather than the generation. They discovered, as late as day 21, that their fractional code zero sail was a more effective sail than the A6 spinnaker they had been flying.
“The Russians walloped us over the past 24-hours and the A6, AKA ‘the lemon’ was to blame. It’s quite depressing, and bitterly frustrating, to be passed as quickly as we were, but not know sail crossovers is one of the difficulties with a late entry programme. We are learning,” wrote navigator Matt Gregory.
They suffered damage to their rig 10 days out from the start, when the starboard jumper (part of the rig) was fell out of the rig and bounced down the deck, narrowly missing the crew. It took the crew 12 hours to make a repair, which was effective even in the heavy westerly gale.
