Saturday, March 04, 2006

Go East, Young(ish) Men!

In the end it was a unanimous decision – all the boats of the Volvo Ocean race went to the east of the Falkland Islands. It maybe longer but the winds are better and memories of those that went west on previous races are not happy ones.

At Cape Horn it looked for a minute like more boats than just Brazil would take the Le Maire Straits route – ABN AMRO ONE until the last moment was heading that way, but was this a change of mind or a decoy? Who can tell?

There was of course another choice at the Falkland Islands – go between them! I’d have been tempted if I was on Ericsson to say “Sod-it – we’re last and likely to remain there. Let’s have some fun”. Imagine blasting up the Falklands Sound at 20 knots – that would not just give some great PR photos but also cheer up the weary crew too!

On the other hand its been a long leg and Rio is a city worth rushing to.

Image from Virtual Spectator

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