When they arrived this afternoon, fourth place theirs after 42 days, 13 hours and 57 minutes of racing, the frustration at that decision was not far from the surface.
“It’s something we discussed ad nauseam for four days,” Walker said. “We actually nearly broke away at Fiji, three or four days before Ericsson 3 did. We would have been two or three days ahead of them if we had. But that’s racing. We took the percentages.
“It’s probably the only decision I would change if I could. We missed an opportunity to cut the corner on everyone. You don’t get many of those opportunities. We might get one more in the rest of the race.”
With that, he perked up. “We did sail a good leg.”
They did. It has been well documented that their boat lacks the pace of the front runners in certain conditions, causing the team to seek compensation in different routes that might bridge the gap.
“The tough thing is we are clearly 5-10% slower,” Verbraak explained. “If you are in the same piece of water and losing you have to find alternatives. We tried to do that and some times it worked.”
In this leg, they were already 73 miles down after two days sailing almost the exact same route of their rivals. And they were 207 adrift in fourth a further two days down the track. Their navigator, Wouter Verbraak responded by placing the boat further east and after nearly three weeks they were back within 32 miles of the leader.
Leg Five Day 43: 1300 GMT Volvo Ocean Race Positions
Ericsson 3 SWE (Magnus Olsson/SWE) FINISHED
Ericsson 4 SWE (Torben Grael/BRA) FINISHED
PUMA Racing Team USA (Ken Read/USA) FINISHED
Green Dragon IRL/CHI (Ian Walker/GBR) FINISHED
Telefónica Blue ESP (Bouwe Bekking/NED) + 10
Delta Lloyd IRL (Roberto Bermudez/ESP) DNS
Telefónica Black ESP (Fernando Echávarri/ESP) DNS
Team Russia RUS (Andreas Hanakamp/AUT) DNS
Leg Five Finishing Order Rio de Janeiro
1. Ericsson 3: 8 points
2. Ericsson 4: 7 points
3. PUMA: 6 points
4. Green Dragon 5 points
Overall Leaderboard (Provisional)
1. Ericsson 4 (Torben Grael/BRA) 63.5 points (FINISHED)
2. PUMA (Ken Read/USA) 53 points (FINISHED)
3. Telefónica Blue (Bouwe Bekking/NED) 46.5 points (RACING)
4. Ericsson 3 (Magnus Olsson/SWE) 43.5 (FINISHED)
5. Green Dragon (Ian Walker/GBR) 39.5 (FINISHED)
Cape Horn Scoring Gate
Ericsson 3: 17.03.09 1222 GMT: 4 points
Ericsson 4: 17.03.09 1448 GMT: 3.5 points
PUMA: 17.03.09 2046 GMT: 3 points
Green Dragon: 18.03.09 0215 GMT 2.5 points
Telefónica Blue: 19.03.09 1339 GMT 2 points