The reasons why were not hard to figure out. “We’re a bit sad because we basically gave it away,” said Blue skipper Bouwe Bekking.
Moments earlier, Magnus Olsson was in typically good form. “What a bloody wonderful team,” he said. “A great result.”
And one that was partly caused by Blue’s misfortune and misjudgement.
Bekking’s crew had, for 12 of the 15 days at sea, led the fleet. At one stage the advantage they grabbed 10 hours into the leg, had reached 108 miles. En route they rounded the scoring gate in first place, navigator Tom Addis playing an almost perfect strategic race.
“We had a good strategy going into this leg and played it out really well through the gate and into the trades,” Addis said. “That was all very much part of the plan set out from that start.”
Then it got tricky. From April 20 until April 23 the fleet began closing in as Blue headed into an area of lighter winds. On the 23rd,when Ericsson 4 had closed to within six miles, a call to gybe towards the west was made, a decision that had Bekking fretting for days in advance.
“A very tricky call has to be made,” he wrote from the boat on April 22. “You gybe too early and you run out of pressure, you gybe too late and you end up with a bad angle to the whale exclusion box…That will be the race call.”
In many ways, it was. Blue went early, hiding their move for 12 hours under the guise of their StealthPlay. When they reappeared, they were in third, and three hours later, when Ericsson 4’s own stealth period ended, Blue were fourth, about 55 miles off Ericsson 4’s lead.
Ericsson 3 and PUMA profited in the aftermath – Olsson’s crew actually held first place for one sched on April 25 – before Blue regained third from PUMA on the leg’s final day, enabling them to take second on the overall leaderboard in a thrilling end to the stage.
- Telefonica Blue Finishing Third In Boston For Leg 6 (Photo By George Bekris / Challenge and Adventure)
- Fireboat Cascades Water Beside Telefonica Blue At Leg 6 Finish In Boston (Photo By George Bekris ? Challenge and Adventure)
