Just minutes after the finish of the Bretagne In-Port Race in Lorient, France the Volvo Ocean Race team spoke with the skippers and their crew about the penultimate inshore race and what lies ahead in Leg 9.
Franck Cammas, Groupama, 1st
"This is a very good day for us, especially seeing as we didn’t plan on winning. It’s a good way to manage the in-port race by making no mistakes. It’s incredible to be doing so well. We were aiming for at least third place today. We outdid ourselves. This is a happy day for Groupama, there were so many people on the water here in Lorient, it was such a great atmosphere.
"We used the mistakes of the other competitors for sure, we are happy about that. But we have to continue like that.
"The problem in offshore racing is anything can happen on the sea tomorrow and tomorrow night it will be windy, so we have to be careful with the boat and the structure. But for sure, I prefer to start the leg with a 25-point lead, there is less pressure.
"I think the last leg is more of a longer inshore, than a shorter offshore. The track and the routing is very simple so I think Jean-Luc can give us all his skill before the start, we can prepare the navigation very well, I think we need more a trimmer and race man to be very fast. The routing is for now simple, except maybe the final three or four hours, otherwise we just need to be very fast."
Mike Sanderson, skipper, Team Sanya, 6th
“I’m obviously pretty disappointed with that. I don’t know what’s going on – this boat is the world’s most unlucky boat. I know I’m not supposed to say that but if you dropped the piece of toast 10 times you’d be pretty disappointed if it landed with the peanut butter face down each time. That’s just what happens. We got a nice start but it just seemed to spiral backwards. We had to make a bold move early on just to stay in the game and it went from bad to worse. I can’t put my finger on it.”
Chris Nicholson, skipper, CAMPER with Emirates Team New Zealand, 2nd
"It was one of those bad/good days. We did so much so right. We had some good reasons why we gybed where we did, so it will be an interesting debrief. You can’t get upset with that because there were solid reasons why we did what we did, it just didn’t work out. It went from being a cluster to a mistake. It’s a long process to make sure that stuff never happens, but in general we had a good day.
"We knew we were early. It was a question of whether we could get to the mark and the three boat lengths circle early. We had PUMA on one side with more breeze and Groupama with more breeze on the other side and we kind of went down the middle slowly. We were there just trying to surf any wave possible just to hang on, but they probably put 40 metres on us.
"It was impressive to watch, I thought. We’ve done a lot of pre-start work all week. We had a nice mode and feel on board for the pre-start, for the whole hour and a half. We did a lot of practice runs and it worked."
Ken Read, skipper, PUMA Ocean Racing powered by BERG, 3rd
It was one unforced error -- that was the difference between us having control of [Groupama] and them having control of us. We had a great run and wiggled round them and went to gybe and the clew of the jib managed to snap the jib sheet. It was something we’d never seen before. It was a simple gybe but once that jib sheet got caught around the weather daggerboard the only thing we could do is cut it loose. It was a great fight, a great comeback, a great opportunity gone by the wayside.
Abu Dhabi Ocean Racing skipper Ian Walker, 5th:
It was interesting because we messed the start up. We said with about two minutes to go that we think everyone is going to start from the pin and that was the case. Everyone feels they have to win the races now, so no one is going to start conservatively apart from Groupama. There wasn’t room for everyone to start down there. We just got spat out and it’s a long way back. We sailed very well, we did some of our best spinnaker hoists, we did a really good drop at the bottom of the first run and got inside two boats. To be fair after a terrible start we sailed a very good race.
Team Telefónica skipper Iker Martínez, 4th:
Today we were fourth, one place off the podium. We were in a pretty tricky situation at the start, and we ended up not doing very well out of that. Then we were fighting for a little bit, we lost a position to Abu Dhabi, gained one with Sanya and then managed to pass Abu Dhabi again. So in the end fourth.
To do better today we needed to be in a better position after the start for sure. I think perhaps Groupama were the only ones to get a bad start and move forward. The rest of us the positions were just the same.
1 Groupama (6 points in Port) 225
2 PUMA Ocean Racing by BERG (4) =200
3 CAMPER with Emirates Team NZ (5) 196
4 Team Telefónica (3) 194
5 Abu Dhabi Ocean Racing (2) 124
6 Team Sanya (1) 40
From : VOR
Credit : E.Allaire
Franck Cammas, Groupama, 1st
"This is a very good day for us, especially seeing as we didn’t plan on winning. It’s a good way to manage the in-port race by making no mistakes. It’s incredible to be doing so well. We were aiming for at least third place today. We outdid ourselves. This is a happy day for Groupama, there were so many people on the water here in Lorient, it was such a great atmosphere.
"We used the mistakes of the other competitors for sure, we are happy about that. But we have to continue like that.
"The problem in offshore racing is anything can happen on the sea tomorrow and tomorrow night it will be windy, so we have to be careful with the boat and the structure. But for sure, I prefer to start the leg with a 25-point lead, there is less pressure.
"I think the last leg is more of a longer inshore, than a shorter offshore. The track and the routing is very simple so I think Jean-Luc can give us all his skill before the start, we can prepare the navigation very well, I think we need more a trimmer and race man to be very fast. The routing is for now simple, except maybe the final three or four hours, otherwise we just need to be very fast."
Mike Sanderson, skipper, Team Sanya, 6th
“I’m obviously pretty disappointed with that. I don’t know what’s going on – this boat is the world’s most unlucky boat. I know I’m not supposed to say that but if you dropped the piece of toast 10 times you’d be pretty disappointed if it landed with the peanut butter face down each time. That’s just what happens. We got a nice start but it just seemed to spiral backwards. We had to make a bold move early on just to stay in the game and it went from bad to worse. I can’t put my finger on it.”
Chris Nicholson, skipper, CAMPER with Emirates Team New Zealand, 2nd
"It was one of those bad/good days. We did so much so right. We had some good reasons why we gybed where we did, so it will be an interesting debrief. You can’t get upset with that because there were solid reasons why we did what we did, it just didn’t work out. It went from being a cluster to a mistake. It’s a long process to make sure that stuff never happens, but in general we had a good day.
"We knew we were early. It was a question of whether we could get to the mark and the three boat lengths circle early. We had PUMA on one side with more breeze and Groupama with more breeze on the other side and we kind of went down the middle slowly. We were there just trying to surf any wave possible just to hang on, but they probably put 40 metres on us.
"It was impressive to watch, I thought. We’ve done a lot of pre-start work all week. We had a nice mode and feel on board for the pre-start, for the whole hour and a half. We did a lot of practice runs and it worked."
Ken Read, skipper, PUMA Ocean Racing powered by BERG, 3rd
It was one unforced error -- that was the difference between us having control of [Groupama] and them having control of us. We had a great run and wiggled round them and went to gybe and the clew of the jib managed to snap the jib sheet. It was something we’d never seen before. It was a simple gybe but once that jib sheet got caught around the weather daggerboard the only thing we could do is cut it loose. It was a great fight, a great comeback, a great opportunity gone by the wayside.
Abu Dhabi Ocean Racing skipper Ian Walker, 5th:
It was interesting because we messed the start up. We said with about two minutes to go that we think everyone is going to start from the pin and that was the case. Everyone feels they have to win the races now, so no one is going to start conservatively apart from Groupama. There wasn’t room for everyone to start down there. We just got spat out and it’s a long way back. We sailed very well, we did some of our best spinnaker hoists, we did a really good drop at the bottom of the first run and got inside two boats. To be fair after a terrible start we sailed a very good race.
Team Telefónica skipper Iker Martínez, 4th:
Today we were fourth, one place off the podium. We were in a pretty tricky situation at the start, and we ended up not doing very well out of that. Then we were fighting for a little bit, we lost a position to Abu Dhabi, gained one with Sanya and then managed to pass Abu Dhabi again. So in the end fourth.
To do better today we needed to be in a better position after the start for sure. I think perhaps Groupama were the only ones to get a bad start and move forward. The rest of us the positions were just the same.
1 Groupama (6 points in Port) 225
2 PUMA Ocean Racing by BERG (4) =200
3 CAMPER with Emirates Team NZ (5) 196
4 Team Telefónica (3) 194
5 Abu Dhabi Ocean Racing (2) 124
6 Team Sanya (1) 40
From : VOR
