ALICANTE, Spain // For a crew that had just finished second, there were a surprising number of smirks, sniggers and outright laughs.
Saturday's opening event in the nine-month Volvo Ocean Race might have represented little more than a final, dressed rehearsal, with no points on offer, but the Abu Dhabi Ocean Racing (ADOR) gave it a full-blown try.
After finishing six seconds behind the US/Turkish boat Alvimedica, relief might have nipped disappointment as the overwhelming sentiment on the ADOR’s Azzam.
As the race ended, the navigator on Azzam, Simon Fisher, was quick to remind his fellow crewmen that his boat had won the Alicante in-port race in each of the past two Volvo openers.
“Then the boats didn’t make it out of the Mediterranean,” he said.
At the 2011/12 race, Azzam won the in-port opener, but its mast broke six hours into the first open-sea leg. Three years earlier, aboard Telefonica, Fisher’s ship also had early mechanical issues.
“So we finished second, but I’ve broken the cycle of bad juju,” Fisher said, laughing.
Azzam had an issue with the headsail at the end of the first lap, which eventually cost them the lead, and the aggressive Alvimedica boat capitalised, winning by roughly 25 metres as thousands watched along the Alicante shoreline.
Alvimedica finished in 52 minutes, five seconds, with Azzam almost within arm’s reach.
Though no points accrued towards the overall title, the race was more than a parade lap with friendly waves to spectators. Some thought the boats might play it conservatively, but Ian Walker, the Azzam skipper, made his goal for the day clear.
“We had a meeting this morning,” Walker said, keeping a straight face, “and we said we weren’t going to try to win the race.”
He was kidding. But finishing six seconds in arrears hardly left a lingering bad taste.
The win by Alvimedica skipper Charlie Enright, 30, underscored what could be an unpredictable 39,000-mile race.
Enright has the youngest crew in the event, with only seven previous Volvo races among his eight sailors, and he has never sailed in the race, much less served as skipper.
Team Brunel, the Dutch entry and the pre-race favourite in the minds of many, finished fourth, 46 seconds back. Though, again, nobody seemed to be sweating the results.
“We haven’t put much emphasis on the in-port races,” skipper Bouwe Bekking said. “It’s all about the offshore races.”
The Spanish entry, Mapfre, sputtered early, but recovered quickly to finish third. A late, midsummer entry, the team is still getting used to the new one-design boat and most expect the crew to be a contender by the time the openings legs are completed.
“We need to have the same attitude for the next nine months, and we’ll be good,” skipper Iker Martinez said.
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