Ian Walker, the skipper of Abu Dhabi Ocean Racing’s Azzam vessel, said he and his crew are facing a difficult time after falling to the back of the pack on Leg 6 of the Volvo Ocean Race.
The overall event leaders had been leading the pack on the race to Newport in the United States from Itajal in Brazil, which began last Sunday, when a mistake on strategy put them on the wrong side of an Atlantic cloud line, and they fell to last of the six boats taking part in the leg.
While Azzam were only 19.7 nautical miles behind leaders Dongfeng on Sunday, while still in sixth spot, Walker wrote in his blog for the race website that they had put themselves in a tough position for trying to make back the ground lost.
RELATED
– Dongfeng fight back to the lead in Volvo Ocean Race Leg 6
“Unfortunately we lost the lead just at the crucial point when the race turns into a procession,” he wrote. “Worse than that we know we will have a day or two where the leaders will stretch away as they should always have more wind and a better wind angle.
“Mentally we have prepared ourselves to end up at least 20 miles behind and it could be worse.”
Walker said the immediate aim over the next few days was damage limitation and to ensure that they stayed in close vicinity to their rivals.
“We need to keep sailing as fast as we can and that is what we do day in, day out; trying different variables to see if we can sneak more speed out of Azzam,” he said.
“The focus now is to minimise the damage so we can be in a position to take advantage of any opportunities that will almost certainly arise later in the leg.”
Walker said his crew, who have won two of the first five legs, and have yet to finish outside the top three, have shown enough resilience in the previous legs to not be counted out of the overall fight for victory on the current leg.
“I believe you find out how strong a team is in times of adversity and we have had very little of that in this race so far, maybe some periods in Leg 2 after the equator and off Sri Lanka in Leg 3. On both those occasions, we kept our spirits up and somehow found a way to claw ourselves back into contention.
“While I’m confident we’ll bounce back, I suspect it will be at least a week before we get any sort of chance to do so. In the meantime, we work non-stop on our speed and we wait and watch how the weather will play out.”
sports@thenational.ae
FOLLOW US ON TWITTER @NatSportUAE
