Leg 7 - Boston to Galway

Guy Salter / Ericsson 4 / Volvo Ocean Race

The 2,550 nautical mile transatlantic crossing had everything including a third place for home-town heroes Green Dragon - the team's first leg podium of the campaign.

After seven days of incredibly tight racing, jousting with low pressure systems and the Gulf Stream, just five hours and four minutes separated first to last. 

Ericsson 4 banked maximum points when they arrived just after midnight on Sunday, 24 May after seven days 10 hours 33 minutes and 51 seconds of sailing.

PUMA maintained its grip on second place in the overall standings by finishing second with their closest adversary Telefonica Blue, just behind the  Dragons, in fourth.

The reception for Ian Walker's men from the 30,000 brave souls who turned out in the early hours to greet the home boys was raucous.  "I don't think I've seen anything like it, quite honestly," said Ian Moore. "We are just thrilled, absolutely thrilled," added Justin Slattery. "As good as it gets," claimed Damian Foxall.

The result was the embodiment of perfect timing. This was the team used to accepting disappointment. A crew of some of the world's best offshore sailors but with a keel and budget too light to make an impact against the big hitters.

"Our keel is just too light to do well in that," Foxall explained. "But we knew this leg would offer us a chance to do something because there would be some heavy downwind running."

The Dragons received a helping hand to Galway. Navigator Moore was aided by the opinions of 200,000 people who played the Volvo Ocean Race online game.

They briefly held second place, before surrendering to PUMA, a position they would struggle to regain because they destroyed their fractional reaching spinnaker.

Ken Read's men pipped Green Dragon by 12 minutes, but no one was in the mood for regrets.

"This whole campaign was made for Galway," Walker said. "It was all about coming here and we've picked up a result. We so desperately wanted to get on the podium and we have.

"I'm lost for words. I'm flabbergasted. The number of people, the number of boats. All at four in the morning. Given our recent run, third place was beyond our expectations, but that is what we strive for."

PUMA had to contend with Telefonica Blue beating them to the leg seven scoring gate by just a few boat lengths. And it got worse when, having finally battled back to take the lead, they broke their port rudder.

It saw them drop 26 miles and a fall to fifth place. But skipper Read enjoyed the leg nonetheless. "That was some of the best sailing we've ever done in our whole lives," he said. "To come back after breaking the rudder like that. This reception is unbelievable. It's like sailing is a real sport."

Blue's fourth place meant their hold over PUMA on second overall was cut to 1.5 points. Blue skipper Bouwe Bekking conceded: "Sometimes you have good days and sometimes bad, look at Green Dragon." Thousands upon thousands of locals agreed.

Each of the final three boats to finish held the lead at some stage and had realistic claims to a podium finish had it not been for a string of sorry tales along the way.

For Delta Lloyd it was the A6 that tore when they were among the front runners, leaving with fifth place to show for their efforts. For sixth-placed Telefonica Black, the leaders after four days, poor downwind performance in heavy weather proved their ultimate undoing.

As for Ericsson 3, they struck a whale two days into the leg and lost an estimated 10% of their speed over the remainder of the journey.

A team who had grown accustomed to offshore success was not entirely overjoyed. First on Leg 5 and second on Leg 6 to last on Leg 7, was a bitter pill.

"We've been doing really well and this leg looked good for us," explained navigator Aksel Magdahl. "The conditions would have been right for our boat to do well. But we were unfortunate."

The Nordic crew had been up with the leaders heading towards the scoring waypoint at St John's when it all went wrong.

"It was very thick fog, hard to see more than 20 metres in front of the boat," Magdahl added. "We saw one whale and took some evasive action to avoid that and then hit the next one. I was in a bunk and flew all the way to the next one. It was a hard hit; I thought we had hit a rock or ice or something."

It left the team with a broken daggerboard - which they replaced - but also damage to the keel fin fairings.

 The crew of Delta Lloyd considered fifth place a consolation, despite it being their best offshore result so far.

"We were sailing really well so we were quite confident for a top three finish, so I guess we are a bit disappointed," said watch leader Stu Wilson.

The mood in the Black camp also carried a hint of frustration. Fernando Echavarri's crew had led the fleet as they passed beyond the ice exclusion zone, but their issues when running in heavy air resurfaced.

"We performed quite well," Echavarri said. "In the first half we were very comfortable with the boat and we did well. But we knew it was going to be really hard downwind.

"At the end we were really close to passing Delta Lloyd, but we could not. It was a very exciting racing, very close."

USEFUL LINKS

Download the leg 7 sailing instructions (439kb PDF)
Download the leg 7 start course diagram (845kb PDF)
Download the leg 7 crew list (81kb PDF)

You can replay the leg 7 highlights on .TV here

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