Last Analysis

Taken from the stern of Ericsson 3

Judging by the green gills around me as I headed out on Ericsson 3 in Galway, this next statement will seem like a gloat no matter what the context. As of the in-port race weekend in Galway, I had sailed on three of the current crop of Volvo 70s: Delta Lloyd, Green Dragon, and Ericsson 3. It’s a pretty privileged position for someone who can offer little to a race team, and it allows me make some interesting comparisons.

Taking the trips chronologically and in terms of development, Delta Lloyd was my first, before she became Delta Lloyd at all and was, in fact, still wearing her Ericsson knickers. Ger O’Rourke had just taken ownership of what became Ericsson’s training boat while Ericsson 3 and 4 were being put together. The former ABN Amro One  – winner of the last VOR – was, back then, in a sorry state, with severe and visible UV damage to the carbon, an old mast, and a generally dilapidated look about nearly every part of the kit. That’s not surprising when you consider she’d trained for, completed and won a round-the-world race and was in training for nunmber two. A few days later she would be in a worse state when Ger & crew punctured her on the marina as they made their way out to the Round Ireland start.  Oops.

We went out on Dublin Bay for a short sail in about 14 knots. It was my first time out on a canting keeler, and something with as much power in the rig. The lads had just delivered her up from Lanzarote and were obviously still finding their feet. Manouevres were slow, cagey and mis-timed. Managing the backstays, which support the mast and operate under a load of eight tonnes (the weight of a double-decker bus hanging from a rope) was stated and re-stated. If you screw up the backstay, use the wrong strop or the wrong load at the wrong time, you risked losing the mast, 100 feet of very expensive carbon fibre. You could feel an extra 20% of potential power unused in the boat a lot of the time as we sailed upwind, begging someone to head her down just three crucial degrees to dig in the board and power up the headsail.

With small sails up, this was a very softly, softly affair, and the promise of 700 miles of hard, heavy-airs racing in the Round Ireland, just days away, seemed foolhardy. That prang may have been a blessing in disguise, although you wouldn’t know it from the faces on the pier when I cornered them a few minutes after it had happened.

Fast forward a few months, and you would have found me in Galway, preparing to sail overnight with Green Dragon to Cork. The boat was still a white dragon at this stage, unliveried and very much in preparation mode, albeit more advanced than that of Delta. We pootled out of Galway Bay in just a few knots of breeze, but already the air of professionalism was palpable. In the morning gloom, Damian Foxall and Andrew McLean took every opportunity to quantify the performance of sails to work on their crossover spreadsheets. This meant logging the wind speed and wind angle with a given sail combination and marking down the average speed over time, to determine what sail setups work best in what conditions. Manoeuvres were silent, everything spoken in the shorthand of a crew who already knew each others movements. Job lists were constantly updated, and when it became apparent that the delivery trip would be more or less a motor to the Fastnet, war stories were swapped.

I got some sleep on the most uncomfortable bunk I have ever slept on. I woke up at around midnight, off the coast of Cork, and staggered up on deck, where I was told to strap in. The boat felt steady underfoot, but a quick look at the dials and the concentration on everyone’s faces told me there were 20 knots of breeze, which you could barely feel because we were sailing downwind under masthead spinnaker, doing 21 knots. It felt cruisy. We gybed back and forth, stacking the sails laboriously either side with every turn. Despite the speed, and the conditions, everything seemed effortless. A gybe meant a smooth turn in the dark, a flurry of action on the coffee grinders to whip the spinnaker around and grind in the main.

Then the boom would flop a short distance, the heel would come on from a different angle and increase as the main was eased, before the generator growled, powering up the canting keel to flatten the boat again and send us off on a new angle. We docked at Haulbowline just after 3am, and spent a damp, cold hour stripping the boat of all sails and kit so that the crew could break the boat down fully in the morning for a re-fit. At 5am, I crawled into bed after some lukewarm lasagna, only to be woken again at 7.30 for another day of work.

Fast forward again, to three-quarters of the way through the Volvo Ocean Race. It’s practice day for the in-port race, and I’m on the stern of Ericsson 3. Helly Hansen were good enough to bring me down on a press junket and kit me out in their gear, and I’m perched behind the helm of the boat as we wheel around for three practice starts and a real dial-up for the practice race.

With the guts of the race behind them, things have moved from the silent professionalism of the Green Dragon delivery to near-telepathic levels. No voices are raised. Once off the start line, every move is executed as if willed wordlessly by a higher power. In the pre-start, the 14-tonne powerhouse is whirled around among the six others as if a small dinghy, with crews from the boats taunting each others like teens at a junior regatta.

“Yeah! Why don’t you come up to us – we’re right here, c’MON!”

Bowsprits are spun within a foot of sterns, the boats reach past each other at more than 14 knots and after two minutes of intense, close-quarters jostling, we’re off upwind at full tilt.

Downwind, the boats gybe in and out of each other just like any assymetric fleet. They sail as if in a very fine groove downwind, too low and the power is gone, a fraction too high and the power would be too much. Needless to say, our helm toes the line, and we max out at 21 knots for the afternoon. All in all it’s a powerful demonstration of how incredibly competent these guys are. The potential for eyeball-rinsing action on boar is apparent any time you turn these boats across the wind and head across a few waves, but in the flat water of Galway Bay this was never an option.

Delta Lloyd, it should be said, is an entirely different boat from the wreck I sailed more than a year previously. Black and stealthy, she shows plenty of pace and boathandling to match her new look. The pros on board Green Dragon sail cleanly but slowly.

However, you don’t need to be on board a VO70 to appreciate one. From half a mile away, the sound of a loaded winch being released peals like a stabbed wraith. They are thundering behemoths and power through the water like nothing I’ve ever seen.

I want one.