Leg 2 of the Volvo Ocean Race 2008/09 started Saturday, November 15th. This time the fleet faces 4,450 nautical miles from Cape Town, South Africa, to Cochin, India, the first completely new and unknown leg of the race to be sailed by the eight participating boats. No knowledge of these waters means that the teams will have to rely on statistics instead of experience. Large fishing fleets of small wooden vessels represent as big a hazard here as the ‘liquid Himalayas’ of the traditional southern route. A scoring gate south of Mauritius and along the meridian of 58-degrees east represents a further opportunity to collect points on the leg and keeps the fleet away from known areas of piracy.
PUMA (Ken Read/USA) scorched off the start line, leading the fleet from Ericsson 4 (Torben Grael/BRA). With her huge red masthead gennaker set and going like a freight train, PUMA blazed the trail, with water pouring over the deck and a small number four jib working as a staysail set underneath the gennaker. Green Dragon (Ian Walker/GBR) was in third position, and Team Russia (Andreas Hanakamp/AUT) was up with the pack, while Delta Lloyd with new skipper, Roberto Bermudez/ESP made a disappointing start. Unfurling their big headsail first, Green Dragon benefitted from good speed in her position down to leeward of the fleet, while some of the other teams struggled to manage these huge, unwieldy sails.
Torben Grael’s Ericsson 4, flying a more conservative fractional gennaker, was sucked up under Telefónica Blue (Bouwe Bekking/NED) in the big chop, whipped up by the wind and the armada of spectator boats. PUMA, however, made the right choice of sail and almost laid the first mark before the crew furled the sail shortly before rounding the first of three marks on the triangular course set in Table Bay. Ericsson 3 (Anders Lewander/SWE) mishap when the jib got caught on the radar dome, ripping the sail and detaching the dome from the mast. Overnight the sail has been satisfactorily repaired, but the crew is still trying to come up with a solution to repair the dome.
