Thomas Johanson onboard Ericsson 3, on leg 8 of the Volvo Ocean Race, from Galway to Marstrand. Image copyright Gustav Morin/Ericsson 3/Volvo Ocean Race.
by Gustav Morin
Furious fire hosing to sunny sea breeze
The first 24 hours of this leg has really been a trip, showing every side of sailing and making it very obvious what it takes to be a competitive crew member in this race.
We have had winds up to 43 knots and waves that made the boat take off in surfs over 30 knots and dive into the next coming wall of water with fierce power. After a heavy and extremely wet reach around the Fastnet Rock in complete darkness, we now have very calm conditions in the English Channel. But the racing is still intense; we are eye to eye with all the boats in the fleet.
There have been a lot of changes on the scoreboard so far, for example Telefónica Black went from last to first. Going VMG downwind here makes it very important to get the shifts right and gybe in the right moment. And if you gamble and break away from the fleet, everything can happen. For the Spanish on Telefónica Black it turned out well this time. Let’s see what happens the coming hours.
These last short legs may look like nothing knowing that we have been on one leg for around 44 days, but now the setup and the mindset are completely different. The first 24 hours most of us have only slept for two hours, some of us nothing. In the heavy airs and with the close–to–shore–racing you always have to be ready for a gybe or a sail change.
Everyone is always on standby. Resting has to wait until Marstrand.
The race is coming to its end and we start to feel it onboard. It was boring to leave Galway with all its charm and the fantastic support and interest from everyone, it was just a great stopover. If I do this race again I have nothing against coming back to this town, even though, as a taxi driver said the other day, ‘you can be quite sure the rain will be flooding down then, since you got so lucky this time.’
Volvo Ocean Race
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