La Rochelle to Gothenburg

Whether it was nerves or navel-gazing, the crew on ASSA ABLOY were strangely off form at the start of the eighth leg and managed to snag the start buoy line around their keel.

Jason Carrington stripped off and jumped over to free the line from the rudder, but when the boat shifted direction, they realised the line was caught around the keel bulb, not the rudder. Richard Mason was also sent overboard, but he decided to swim to the trailing mark and cut the anchor line off the mark rather than risk a deep dive in the busy waters.

This all took about eight minutes and the commotion was noisy and frantic, but eventually the boat moved off, having been required by the rules to execute a 360-degree penalty turn for hitting the mark.

The penultimate leg was due to take just five days, but the first night will stick in the minds of the crews as one of the most unpleasant of the race due to the huge swells in the Bay of Biscay, combined with 40 knots of breeze on the nose.

“We have had a tight race since the start and we are soaking wet after a slog to this left hand corner. Very unpleasant conditions have resulted in some of the crew spending time on the white telephone to god,” Matt Humphries reported with unseemly glee on NewsCorp.

Amer Sports One was the first yacht to round Ushant and all yachts were round within one and a half hours, ASSA ABLOY going round sixth. In the English Channel, they fanned out, choosing their own routes to minimise the effects of adverse tides and the hurly burly mass of ferries, cargo and container ships.

There wasn’t much to pick between their different strategies and each time the position reports were updated, the leader had changed. If they stayed so close together all the way to Gothenburg, ASSA ABLOY was in with a chance of seriously challenging illbruck for the overall top position.

But with 400 nm still to go, the boat slowed down for no good reason.

“We checked the foils, and could see some things on the keel,” explained Rudiger. “All hands on deck. Our swimmer Richard Mason in wet suit just in case, spinnaker down, full head to wind back down. Nelly [Neal McDonald] pulled it off perfectly and in minutes we were bearing away again and putting the spinnaker back up. Even though perfectly executed, SEB shot on by and illbruck almost overtook us. From first to third and almost fourth. Magnus [Olsson] came up on deck shaking his head, and exclaimed in his drawn out Swedish accent 'you won't believe what was on the keel.' Everyone looked around waiting for some one to guess. 'Three big fishes,' he laughed, spreading his arms as far as he could. We all looked suspicious of another Magnus Olsson fish story, but Richard and Sidney [Gavignet] confirmed having watched through the scope. I had to agree that looking at the performance factor on the graph, it went up six percent. So now after 48 hours of giving everything for a few boat lengths, it's back to the grinder for more boat lengths to gain back.”

Kelp and fish were the skippers main headache on this final leg as vital time was lost on back downs, but it was a problem that affected everyone. Along the south coast of England, some of the boats were close enough to the Isle of Wight to spot the white rocks of the island's coast.

"Some of the Poms on board are glad of the sight of old blighty off the port bow, some even twitching at the thought that we were within 55 nautical miles of the Pier View in Cowes and could almost taste the beer,” said Campbell Field from NewsCorp.

At the entrance into the Gothenburg archipelago, ASSA ABLOY, Tyco, illbruck and NewsCorp were still within a mile of each other. With two nm to go, after 1,000 nautical miles of close, cut-throat racing, it was McDonald who made the biggest impression on the sandbars, close in shore to avoid the tide, even though Dalton allegedly put in 47 tacks over that distance, in 25 knots of wind.

McDonald kept up the pressure right to the finish and chiselled out a victory in the last few seconds. The top five boats crossed the finish in a remarkable six minutes and 50 seconds in what was the most thrilling finish in the history of round the world racing.

A win for McDonald was the perfect result, since it meant there was still a chance that illbruck could be beaten overall if ASSA ABLOY posted another victory in the ninth leg from Gothenburg to Kiel and if illbruck came in fifth or worse.

It was a big if, but this uncertainty created a storm of interest.