Volvo Ocean Race update

Australian Chris Nicholson received the Musto Seamanship Award at a glittering prize-giving ceremony in Rio de Janeiro for his bravery and quick thinking in saving movistar from potentially sinking,

The Australian watch captain was the man who powered up the pumps after water came flooding into the Spanish boat during the fourth leg of the Volvo Ocean Race 2005-06.

He dived underwater to connect two emergency bilge pumps directly to the batteries, suffering a series of electric shocks as he secured the connection, and was able to fire up the pumps to drain tonnes of water that had risen to four feet high in the mid compartments.

ABN AMRO ONE sailed a faultless race on Guanabara Bay to win the fourth in-port race of the Volvo Ocean Race 2005-06 in front of a fleet of 1100 spectator boats.

Skipper Mike Sanderson and his crew took an early lead in the race and crossed the finish line just under two and half hours later to beat second placed movistar by a little over two minutes.

During the race all five of the other boats held second place at some stage and the points were extremely hard fought. After plenty of jostling, movistar went on to take second place and after facing a race against time to repair the boat after leg four, movistar skipper Bouwe Bekking (NED) was content to settle with this.

Paul Cayard's Pirates of the Caribbean looked set to take second place at one point until a boat handling error saw them drop down the fleet.

Cayard explained: "We had a snowballing effect at mark four. We gybed too soon and we missed the lay-line to the mark, which was the first problem and then we had to do two quick manoeuvres, two gybes and a spinnaker drop, which wasn't the end of the world, but when we gybed the jib got wrapped around the headstay and then it got snagged, so even after we unwrapped it we had to drop it."

For the team onboard The Pirates the day got worse as they took the wrong side of the downwind leg and dropped back to sixth place overall.

With the points being so sought after a couple of the teams were a bit over zealous at some of the mark roundings. At the first mark local hero's Brasil 1 were penalised by the on-water umpires with a one turn penalty after infringing a racing rule and tacking within two boat lengths of the mark.

Skipper Sebastien Josse (FRA) on ABN AMRO TWO also received a penalty when he touched the buoy at the penultimate mark rounding.

In the end the podium positions went to the boats that made the least errors, and after moving up from fourth place overall, it was Ericsson who took the final podium spot.

The teams returned to the dockside at the Marina da Gloria in front of a magnificent crowd of 19,000 spectators who cheered all of the boats home, and especially their local hero's on Brasil 1.

The teams now prepare for the leg re-start which sees the boats leaving Rio on Sunday 2 April for the 5000 nautical mile journey to Baltimore, USA.

Photo: In-port race Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, courtesy of movistar

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