Photos: L ©Martin Stockbridge R ©Martin Stockbridge

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Sat, 10 Jun 2006 20:30:00 UTC

Finishing at 13:04.47 local time, fourth place for Paul Cayard and the Pirates of the Caribbean crew breaks their consistent run of offshore podiums which began with their third place into Wellington and leaves them with just four and a half points in hand over Brasil 1.

While Cayard and his crew made no major errors all the way around the painstakingly slow 1,500 mile circumnavigation of Britain and Ireland, initially they reeled in the bigger deficits but across the top of Scotland a matter of forty miles quickly turned to a deficit of sixty-five and then over 100 miles.

With just tomorrow's In Port race and the final sprint to Gothenburg left, there is every chance we will see Pirates come out for a swashbuckling showdown with Brasil 1.

Cayard greeted the massive Rotterdam welcome enthusiastically after a long, long day. In bright sunshine, more akin to the Mediterranean than the Maas River, visitors to and residents of the 'city of rolled up sleeves' took the race to their hearts on its first ever visit to Holland. An estimated spectator fleet of eight thousand boats escorted the race boats all the way in to the Veerhaven dock, where there was no room to move.

Cayard's comments

"Fourth is OK," confirmed Cayard. "We still have a nice lead and second place overall and couple more legs to go, so we are looking forward to it."

"It was long and slow. Good mental fortitude was the name of the game. It was painstakingly slow and frustrating at times, parking the boat once every 12 hours literally and slatting, after the high intensity racing. To do the race around Britain was a good mental test."

"We really weren't super-fast at times. We were very close to Ericsson and Brasil at Land's End, second round Land's End and they kind of sailed away from us the next day and were five or six miles ahead and that is really where the separation started. We were with the ABN's and Brunel in a bay on the Irish coast and rounded the corner and kind of got stuck there, we could see them right up there. ABN AMRO were able to get right back up to the leading group and through them, and we were going the same speed as the others. Then the thing got exaggerated up at the top of Scotland there.

“That was a little bit tough to take. We had a lot to risk there, it was obvious the best we could do was fourth and we might even get last, and we knew that the worst Torben was going to be was third, so we were pretty exposed there for a while to lose a lot of points. That's sailboat racing though. I'd rather be in our position than his."

Admitting that the short lead in time to tomorrow's In Port race was no more of a problem for the Pirates than any of the other teams, Cayard mused on the prospects of giving Torben a reminder of his match racing skills.

"It's not like it's the last race of a regatta, but I have to think about it a while. Maybe I can drive him out of the points. If he and I are last and second last then the most he can get on me is one point. It might be a good idea."

Jules Salter looks back

Pirates’ navigator Jules Salter, on a tour of his home waters, was his usual objective, understated self, relishing the prospects that tomorrow and the final leg bring:

"Sailing up the west coast of Ireland was quite enjoyable. We didn't quite get the breaks. We got in the lead at one stage in the middle of the Irish Sea, but we just seemed to lack a bit of wick to get out of that hole, and then lost five miles and then lost 12 miles and then we could never quite get back into it, and then finally we got the big kick in the teeth off the top of Scotland.

"Ireland was best. It was absolutely fantastic. The Butt of Lewis? the Butt of Paul's misery. The whingeing there, I have never heard so much whingeing among the Kiwis and the Americans. It was probably justified though, because it wasn't that great sailing."

"It could have been a lot worse." Salter concluded, "It is still fine, but it would have been nice to have finished it off on this leg. I guess we have secured a podium now which at the start of the race not many people would have predicted.

“I'd like to win it but I can't dream up a scenario where that happens now, but we'll keep trying."

Brunel finishes in fifth place

Brunel's fifth place maintains their momentum, keeping off the back of the pack with a boat which is steadily improving in conditions that were never really thought to be 'theirs'.

Their Dutch fans welcomed them as warmly as they did the race victors, although the accord for ABN AMRO TWO, understandably, was longest and loudest.

For Matt Humphries and his crew, who challenged Cayard's Pirates for the lead on the leg at one point, the result underlined their potential and it, too, could have been worse.

They finished just 41 minutes behind the Pirates.

Humphries, half jokingly, suggested that staying out on the water and waiting for the inshore race would not have been a daft idea.

Humphries comments

"It is so overwhelming to come in like this,” he explained. “It really takes the wind out of you. We have to motor back out and do it all again, and that will be tough. But we'll get some sleep."

"These weren't our conditions and they never were, but before we did these modifications then we would have been another day behind. The guys who sailed the boat really dug right in. It is interesting that all our gains have been at night. We are strong upwind in the breeze, anything else is quite hard to be over pace on anybody. It is pretty hard, a tenth of knot and you can get into all sorts of problems and we have found that."

"Duncansby Head, we got in there ahead of Pirates. We got halfway through ahead of them and they were just 100 metres to leeward and ahead and they just cruised ahead of us. We sat in big chop and no wind."

"It was pretty tedious."

Seb Josse's team gets biggest welcome

The crew on ABN AMRO TWO were disappointed with their sixth but they hid it well as they arrived to a rapturous Rotterdam welcome. Not unexpectedly, they struggled with the light conditions with their beamy, powerful boat and a sail inventory which is not as refined as ABN AMRO ONE.

"It was slow, long and hard," recalled Seb Josse with his trademark winsome smile. "After a few days there was an A fleet and B fleet and all the boats sailed together in their fleet. We did some small things wrong. Nothing big. Some time you lose contact for 15 minutes and that is it. We sailed the boat well, but we really stayed with Cayard all the time but he is a little quicker. But when it is down below 6 knots he is quicker and just is gone and we can not do anything about it."

"We are hoping for a bit more wind for the In Port."

"I don't need to motivate the guys at all. The guys just work really hard all the time. We were close to the last position all the time and we never ever lost motivation. People just work hard all the time. We see where we end up and if we finish five, we finish five with no regrets."

Neil Cox says fickle breeze ruled the leg

Said shore manager turned crew Neil Cox, "It was absolutely stunning coming in to the finish. To see the Dutch people come out in such full force was just amazing. It was not such a good performance for us. We were right in there in the money until the top of Scotland and then got our weather strategy a little wrong. That was not because Seb and SiFi did a bad job. It is just that the way that there was a really fickle breeze where we ended up sailing off to was not really ideal. But we'll give it another go tomorrow."

Si Fi's analysis

ABN AMRO TWO's navigator Simon Fisher summed it up. "It was a tough leg, very different after the really windy legs.

“We had a really good battle with the black boat and a pretty epic battle with the Pirates. We were pretty frustrated when the black boat got away because it came down to righting moment came into and they have a ton more in the keel.

"The mood on board is good. So much of the frustration got washed away when we saw the reception coming in here today."

There’s scarcely time for sleep as the race rolls straight into Sunday morning's In Port race, due to start at 1100 local time. With just 4.5 points of a cushion for second placed Cayard and the Pirates crew over Torben Grael and his attacking Brasil 1 team and half a point now separating ABN AMRO TWO in fourth from Ericsson in fifth, a thrilling pair of match races may be in prospect off the Hook of Holland.

Competition

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