Next few days critical as we cross doldrums

SAILING: MAKING WAVES:A week of solid hard work has led us to first place on the leaderboard with a good wind advantage that should last us perhaps another 24 hours.

AT LAST, we’re in the lead of the Volvo Ocean Race!

A week of solid, hard work by us all, but especially by our skipper Franck and navigator Jean-Luc has led us to first place on the leader-board with a good wind advantage that should last us perhaps another 24 hours.

Yet, while our official distance ahead is only around 30 miles, it is our more easterly position by around 150 miles to second-place Team Telefonica who are the overall event leaders and whom we must try and beat by a few places.

We’re now heading northwards through the Indian Ocean and east of Mauritius after a big investment last week that saw Groupama dive steeply into the Southern Ocean. It must have looked like a repeat of our Leg One tactic when we hugged the African coast and lost touch with the main fleet.

But this time we were all trying to battle the same weather anomaly after leaving Cape Town.

Unusually, we didn’t dive southwards immediately after passing the Cape of Good Hope but rather sailed a Contiki Tours route along the scenic coastline to Port Elizabeth before we could tackle the adverse Aghulas Current and head into deep ocean. And that’s where our path was blocked by a trough of unusual weather that saw us all repeatedly becalmed as we tried to break through to fresher conditions. Finding the path through led Franck and Jean-Luc to pick a south-about approach to go a round the weather-system.

So, for four or five days we appeared to languish at the bottom of the leader-board.

But their plan came good as we found fresher winds first that allowed us to sail quickly into the east and ease northwards to where we are today. It may only look like a tiny lead, 30 odd miles in ocean-racing terms is nothing, ­ but it’ll do us nicely.

For the last two days, we’ve been enjoying trade-winds conditions, blast reaching with the decks constantly awash while those on deck wear the lightest foul-weather gear as it gets progressively warmer. That said, even though we were the furthest boat south, the unusual weather meant we didn’t see true Terrible 30s or Roaring 40s type conditions.We now have to contend with weakening trade winds as we approach the equator once more. As always, there is a doldrums-like zone in the Indian Ocean as well, but as this area is little used for ocean-racing, less is known about the region so the coming days could be critical to the outcome of this leg.

It’s especially unusual in that we won’t be sailing direct for Abu Dhabi due to the threat of piracy in the Indian Ocean area.

Our latest intelligence reports suggest that recent storms have reduced the capabilities of the Somali pirates who massively extended their reach beyond

their normal coastal waters by hijacking large commercial ships that then became floating bases for long-range operations.

As many as 60 pirates are feared dead in recent weeks due to severe weather, though this news is of minimal reassurance.

We continue to race for our “Port of Safe Refuge” that we are not allowed to discuss publicly for fear of the information leading to an attack.

Instead, we’ll be scored for 80 per cent of the leg points on arrival at the mystery port, loaded on to a cargo ship and the boats taken closer to Abu Dhabi where we’ll resume racing for the balance of the leg points.

We’ll be flown to meet the boats, but all this is unlikely to happen until shortly after Christmas so we’re going to be at sea next weekend and we’ll miss being with our families.

Suzy-Ann, Oísin and Neave have stuffed my gear-bag with small gifts for Saturday night.

Luckily, Oísin is old enough now to understand what’s going on with the race and is happy to wait for his Papa to arrive late to celebrate Christmas.

Meanwhile, we don’t yet know what’s going to happen with Mike Sanderson and the boys on Team Sanya who have pulled out of the leg and stopped in Madagascar with damage to their rig.

Fortunately, the mast is still intact, but one of the diagonal rods started to fail and was spotted in time.

They had just taken an exceptionally bold move to break away from the main pack of boats and head north to hitch a ride on a tropical cyclone and were the fleet leaders until the damage.

Who knows what might have happened had they kept going, a four-year-old veteran boat might have taught the rest a lesson by winning the leg! But for now, it’s a fleet of five new boats, all sailing northwards and moving towards very warm conditions.

We’re sailing fast and the reaching conditions have allowed us to settle into a normal watch routine so we’re getting sleep between our spells under the fire-hose on deck. The food isn’t bad this leg – fresh pasta every second day and freeze-dried in between plus plenty of South African Biltong and mini-Mars bars for treats.

It’s getting warmer and I probably should be drinking more water than I am. We carry 1.5 litre water-bottles on deck each at a time which tend to last one watch so I reckon I’m getting about six litres in a day – it should be more, though it doesn’t help when big waves wash our bottles overboard.

It’s an exciting race with this (almost) complete fleet and the next few days will be critical as we cross the doldrums once more.