Photos: L ©2008 Oskar Kihlborg/Ericsson Racing Team R © Hans Berggren/Ericsson Racing Team

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Wed, 23 Jul 2008 12:00:00 UTC

From Torben Grael, Skipper, Ericsson 4

Sent – Tuesday, 22nd July

Everything is going really well onboard. We left Stockholm last Thursday, sailed down the Baltic Sea to reach the south of Sweden, passing close by Gotland.

Then we sailed past Copenhagen heading for Skagen, the north tip of Denmark, before going into the North Sea, where we ran into a cold front – which here is really cold!

Ahead of us we found big waves and strong winds, not the best conditions onboard, but a good test for the new boat.

We kept heading down the North Sea to the English Channel, passing by a number of oil platforms and some tricky sandbanks, forcing our navigator and everyone onboard to pay extra attention to the risks of encountering these obstacles, especially because of the lack of visibility.

Our way through the English Channel was crowned, of course, by rain and change of wind direction caused by big clouds, a tradition in that area. The currents were working in our favor during most of the time, which accelerated our passage, combined with good general meteorological conditions.

Yesterday during the afternoon we passed by Ushant, the extreme north of France, famous for its tough conditions, immortalized in posters that show huge waves hitting the lighthouse. Luckily, the conditions were good and we crossed really close to the cape, trying to overcome the 6 knots of current against us. A regular boat would have had to stay there waiting for the current to change, but our boat and its 4 knots of speed beat the cape with no major problem.

Now, finally in the Atlantic, we are sailing with the spinnaker towards Cape Finisterre, extreme northwest of Spain, passing the Bay of Biscay, famous for tough wind conditions. We don’t expect overly strong winds on our way, something around 30 knots tops. When we pass by Portugal, we will complete the mandatory qualifying sail of 2,000 miles for the Volvo Ocean Race.

After that we should sail in mostly tradewinds with the temperature going up as we approach our destiny, Lanzarote, in the Canary Islands.

Onboard everything is working really well, which is kind of unusual especially when it comes to a brand new boat with no previous test. We’ve noted some things we’ll have to fix, the kind of things that you only find out when you are surfing waves in 30 knots of speed and the water washes the deck.

The atmosphere onboard is excellent, a little bit different from what we had on Brasil 1, of course, but very good. There are three of us from Brasil 1, Horacio Carabelli, João “Joca” Signorini and myself. Today, Joca and I are birthday boys.

We have five Kiwis, three Brazilians, one Briton and one Australian in the crew, and we can see great interaction between all of the guys.

Everything seems to be going pretty well with the Nordic crew. They are just a little bit behind us. There was a small accident with their skipper, but he is doing well now.

Good winds,
Torben Grael

For more blogs and news updates from Ericsson Racing Team, visit their website www.ericssonracingteam.com.

You can watch hours of race video at www.VolvoOceanRace.tv, the official Race TV channel for free!

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