PUMA on the dockside, Cape Town

by Volvo Ocean Race media

Ken Read - skipper

I don’t know where to start. I am so proud of our design team and our build team for putting together the boat. Honestly, I think all the guys on our boat have never pushed a boat that hard before.

Hats off to the Ericsson guys. They showed us clearly that there is might be another level that we need to get to. But, that said, I’ve never gone airborne off the waves before and lived to tell the tale. It’s quite a comforting feeling, from here on, knowing how hard you can push. Now we can sit down as a group and figure out where that next speed button is.

We are pretty comfortable with where we are at. I thought we paced ourselves pretty well. It’s pretty rare that we had to get guys completely out of their sleeping patterns. A couple of guys got pretty taxed in the windy stuff, because we were down to a smaller group of drivers. I think right now, most people are pretty refreshed. We are ready to go tomorrow. We’re ready to go.

We had a few little issues. We had our primary water maker go down when we were off Brazil. That was a little nerve-racking. We actually talked about going into Brazil for a while, but Casey Smith put together a new water maker using a bilge pump. We had some hydraulic keel problems, but structurally we think that the boat is in really good shape.

Seeing where we’ve come from - there was no such thing as PUMA ocean Racing a year ago - so second place is great.

I am very proud of our sailors, our team as a whole, from the boat builders to the office staff.

Andrew Cape – navigator

I haven’t sailed into Cape Town for 11 years, it’s a great place to arrive. It was a good leg all-in all. Happiness all round.

There were bad conditions and most people got through it well. It’s a good sign.
We still had a lot of light air in the Med, then the running and then a lot of reaching and then the hard stuff getting here, so it was mixed bag. Because we haven’t two boat tested against a new boat, we were learning all the time. We’ve learnt a lot and I’m very happy with what we have learnt and where we ended up here.

Ericsson 4 did a good job to sail through us when it was windy, but we were finding our own way there, and we were happy with what we were doing. I guess we were second best, but all-in-all, happy.

It was a great race, with a great team. We are still learning, and for us this first leg was a learning experience.

We had a good leg but Ericsson was lucky to ride that front all the way here. They made it look easy.

It was tight out there, but that is what racing is about. No boats were mega fast or slow, it was a great race.

Volvo Ocean Race