Photos: L ©Oskar Kihlborg R ©Oskar Kihlborg

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Wed, 10 May 2006 00:30:00 UTC

After an exciting, but light weather start from Annapolis, Maryland, the fleet was back at sea again and racing to New York. At 318 nautical miles Leg 6 is the shortest, but possibly the most influential leg of the Volvo Ocean Race.

The fleet had to sail 86 miles before leaving the tricky sailing associated with the Chesapeake Bay, then a new weather system brought up to 25 knots of breeze during the night.

In the first hours of the race, movistar (Bouwe Bekking) broke the gearbox which drives their two main winches, necessitating the transfer of the spinnaker sheet to the mainsheet winch in every manoeuvre.

In the light winds just after the start four boats were all within a mile of each other with Brunel (Grant Wharington), the Australian entry which has just rejoined the fleet after an extensive refit, in fifth place. The two Dutch boats, ABN AMRO TWO (Sebastien Josse) and ABN AMRO ONE (Mike Sanderson) were uncharacteristically bringing up the rear.

During the evening, down at the entrance to the Bay the wind reached a steady plateau of 20 knots, giving ABN AMRO ONE and ABN AMRO TWO the conditions they love best. ABN AMRO ONE managed to catch up by a whopping six miles while Brunel slipped two miles further behind.

Once out of the Chesapeake, Pirates of the Caribbean led the drag race north initially with Ericsson Racing Team, movistar and Brasil 1 (Torben Grael) all vying for the top spot. Positions changed hourly, but the overall race leader, ABN AMRO ONE, was bringing up the rear.

Early in the morning ABN AMRO TWO tacked offshore followed by movistar at 0725 and then Brasil 1 at 0825GMT, although there was no immediate or obvious advantage. Ericsson set up closest to the shore.

By 1000GMT, however, ABN AMRO ONE was back up in top spot, but only by two nautical miles ahead of their nearest rival, movistar.

The breeze quickly increased to 20 to 25 knots with gusts over 40 knots being reported, making it a wet and wild ride northwards, hard on the wind. ABN AMRO TWO lost any advantage they might have gained by going offshore looking for a shift – and getting stronger wind – when they ripped out the tack of a headsail and had to run off miles to leeward to get things back under control. Then a staysail blew out to compound their troubles and they lost more than 20 miles on the fleet.

As the day progressed, the wind increased and short sharp waves beat up the crews, but eventually the wind eased to 20 knots, allowing the yachts to tight reach at 11 knots of boat speed.

After a night in heavy upwind conditions, the battle for second place continued between Pirates of the Caribbean and movistar, with Neal McDonald and his crew on Ericsson fighting it out alongside Brasil 1.

At 0407 local time, 0807GMT, ABN AMRO arrived in the Big Apple to post yet another win, this time the shortest leg of the course, Leg 6 from Baltimore/Annapolis.

“It feels lovely to be here in first place after the week we’ve had and especially after the result we had in the Baltimore In Port race,” commented an exhausted Mike Sanderson “We have had a pretty bumpy ride and it has been pretty tense for us. It feels good to be here with the boat in one piece. We haven’t slept at all. Navigator Stan Honey and I have had a really tough time. The skipper doesn’t sleep enough, and now I shall do lots of sleeping in the city that never sleeps,” he added.

Paul Cayard steered his black and red boat, The Black Pearl, over the finish line in the Hudson River to claim the second at 0647 local time, 1047GMT, bringing the Pirates up to second place overall, with 47.5 points, just half a point ahead of movistar.

On reaching the dock, a visibly shattered Cayard said: “It has been a very tough 40 hours, there was really strong wind off New Jersey and the boat has been really slamming hard. We have had our fair share of problems, but the guys did a great job. Last night was really quite stressful as the wind died altogether and the boats were very close and that is where we had little bit of luck on our side. I can’t recall anything much tougher on this race so far. “

Torben Grael brought his Brazilian team home just nine minutes behind the Pirates to take the final podium place. Three minutes behind, in fourth place, was Ericsson Racing Team with Neal McDonald back in charge, while the Spanish team of movistar finished under a minute later in fifth place.

Brunel (Grant Wharington) was 15 miles behind, followed by ABN AMRO TWO a further 10 miles back.

“Not good.” said ABN AMRO TWO skipper Sebastien Josse, “We want better results, but we were a bit unfortunate. The sail damage was a big part of the problem. We went a bit offshore making our tack and we were in 35 knots of wind. Then when we took in the second reef, the deck line of the J4 broke and at the same time we were in trouble with the jib. We lost ten or 12 miles. We turned downwind to make sure we didn’t break the battens. I’m a little bit mad, when you lose and make a mistake.”

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