Leg nine of the Volvo Ocean Race is one that the skipper and crew of Telefónica Blue would rather forget. Instead of anticipated heated racing against PUMA for second place in the event overall, Telefónica Blue became securely wedged on a rock just outside Marstrand moments after the start last Sunday and had to return to the harbour for repairs.
Finally, we have finished, but not easy. Five miles out, absolutely no breeze for a couple of minutes.
We have been teasing Daryl Wislang over the last 24 hours. Why, because he is the only one of the crew sailing the boat back to Spain after the race is finished.
What should have been the leg for which I had high hopes and with some very close racing, has turned into a ‘cruise’.
After just two and half days after we the hit the rock, we are finally back on the water. The repair has been completed in an extraordinarily short time and the shore crew did a fantastic job.
Amazingly enough, from a convulsed mass of lead, now the bulb is back in its original shape, at least as close as it can be… I have no enough words to describe how thankful to the shore team we are, they’re doing an incredible job fixing everything up. We’re helping them as much as we can. This morning at 4am a group of people, Daryl Wislang, Pepe Ribes, Iker Martinez, Xabi Fernandez and Patan (Pablo Arrarte), went down to the boat and sanded the bulb.
A third place finish in leg nine has been enough for Ericsson 4 to provisionally win the Volvo Ocean Race 2008-09. The team now has a 13-point lead over PUMA, with just 12 points available in the rest of the race.
We have now rounded Skanor, pretty much the southern tip of Sweden and again set our masthead running spinnaker. Delta Lloyd has done the same and closed slightly on us behind.
This really cold evening, reaching on port, we on Telefónica Black have just seen Almagrundet lighthouse blinking straight ahead, the first rounding mark before the finish. The water is very cold for the season, only 9 degrees Celsius and I apologize to my shipmates for not being able to offer a warmer welcome to the Swedish east coast.
We have been side by side with Puma for the last hours. At one point only 50-100 metres apart. It is very tricky to overtake a boat when reaching, they can pretty easy close the gate on you.
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