SAILING:AFTER EIGHT months of racing, the Volvo Ocean Race is about to be decided this week in Irish waters. Theirs to lose, Franck Cammas and the Groupama 4 team have a commanding lead, yet in this most volatile edition of the race nothing is certain, including the arrival time into Galway.
Yesterday saw the six-boat fleet depart Lorient, where Cammas the day before emphatically won the In-Port race before an appreciative home crowd, thus edging further ahead of Ken Read on Puma.
Read has a simple task: finish first on this leg and pray the four other boats place before Cammas into Galway.
In that scenario, or even if the French skipper places second-last, Groupama could not secure overall victory before next Saturday’s In-Port race.
Even assuming Read can win the leg, Cammas only needs to place fourth or better and the outright win is his. That would only leave the In-Port series finale next Saturday to be decided in a one-hour duel.
And the weather. If, as expected the wind swings in the southwest, the French team’s strongest point of sailing, then it is virtually a done deal. But Cammas’s watch-leader Damian Foxall, on track for his first Volvo Ocean race win, preaches caution. “We can’t really relax, we still have something to lose,” he said as Groupama slipped her lines beside the former German U-Boat base in Lorient.
As if to prove the Kerryman’s point, Groupama started the ninth leg conservatively, well clear of the others, and even Mike Sanderson’s Team Sanya staged a successful overtaking manoeuvre in the brief round-the-cans section between Ille de Groix and the mainland.
But the Kiwi was soon slapped back to his more usual place at the rear of the fleet as Cammas powered up to fourth place. Ahead, Chris Nicholson’s Camper had recovered from a penalty restart and was holding first place from Iker Martinez’ Telefonica.
Read was third and, with all six boats in sight of one another, they are expected to arrive into Galway Bay sometime between midnight and 6am tomorrow. The leg may only be 540 miles but nothing is certain until next Saturday evening’s prize-giving.
