Yachting: Race crews face extremes on leg to Rio

By JULIE ASH

From one of the coldest places on Earth to one of the hottest - leg four of the round-the-world race, which starts tomorrow, goes from one extreme to the other.

The 6700-nautical-mile journey from Auckland to Rio de Janeiro takes in the icy cold Southern Ocean, then rounds the notorious Cape Horn into the tropics.

During the 23 or so days the boats are at sea, they can expect all kinds of weather, from fog and ice to heat and humidity.

Halfway between Auckland and Cape Horn the eight boats will be more than 2000 miles from land (excluding Antarctica) sailing on the most remote ocean on the planet.

Aucklander Jamie Gale on illbruck said it's a tricky leg.

"You have to go south into the Southern Ocean again, and probably as far south as we go is around Cape Horn. Obviously that's a milestone in everyone's sailing career.

"Then once around there you start heading north and there is a lot of light air and some upwind sailing, and it will be very hot as you get up towards Rio.

"Out of all the legs it probably has the widest variety of conditions."

After three of the nine legs, illbruck lead overall with 21 points.

Aucklander Grant Dalton's Amer Sports One are second with 18 points, fellow Aucklander Ross Field's News Corp have 16, Assa Abloy 15, Tyco 12, SEB 11, Djuice 10 and Amer Sports Too 5.

It is Gale's first round-the-world race.

"It is everything I expected it to be, and a whole lot more.

There are a lot of special moments. We had one just out of Hobart. We were sailing along behind News Corp for a couple of hours and weren't really doing much, then suddenly the wind shifted a little bit and we sailed through doing five knots more and we were all yahooing away.

"It was one of those moments where you thought, 'This is great.'

"The worst moment was the near-sinking in leg two. But it's never much fun getting hauled out of your bunk at 4 am, getting told to put all your kit on because it is really cold."

Assa Abloy were first into Auckland and Stu Wilson, a trimmer/sailmaker from the Bay of Islands, said that had definitely given the crew a taste of that winning feeling.

"It was a dream to finish first in Auckland. Any Kiwi in the race would have liked to have been first into Auckland."

The high-pressure system over New Zealand meant the yachts would probably have a slow trip away from here.

"Historically, this is the leg where the most breakages occur," Wilson said. "So all we want to do is keep the boat in one piece to Cape Horn."

Tyco watch captain Brad Jackson, of Auckland, competing in his third round-the-world race, said the weather was always a challenge.

"It seems a little bit different in this race. It gets weirder and weirder in each race; I think there is something going on worldwide."

Grant Dalton, who has sailed this leg at least six times, said it caused a few problems for him last time on Merit Cup.

"It was the only leg in the whole race, and probably in any race I have done, where we ended up so exhausted on board we couldn't get a spinnaker up one night. It is a pretty tough one.

"It is the one where we want to start marking up our performance. Then again, it is only one leg of nine. We are only four out of nine legs into it. So we have got a hell of a long way to go."

While the fleet has been in Auckland there has been plenty of speculation about the future of the event - from changing the boats to reducing the number of stopovers.

SEB watch captain Rodney Ardern, of Auckland, has sailed the race twice and said unless the sailors could be motivated and enthralled by the race and the boats they were racing, they wouldn't go out looking for money, and without the money there wouldn't be a race.

"You have to get the sailors' enthusiasm up if you want to make it more of a spectacle, with more or bigger boats," he said.

Aucklander Ross Field will now co-skipper News Corp with Jez Fanstone.

Field's fitness was in doubt after he broke two ribs and injured his back in the second leg, but he was cleared this week to sail.

Field said it had always been News Corp's plan to share the responsibilities to ensure the crew perform to their maximum ability.

The boats leave the Viaduct at 10 am for the 1 pm start in the Rangitoto Channel, east of North Head.

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