Dutch Bouwe Bekking, the skipper of the Team Brunei, celebrates on the podium with his crew after winning the Volvo Ocean Race seventh leg between Newport and Lisbon, yesterday. The 12th Volvo Ocean Race started on October 11, 2014 in Alicante, Spain and will conclude in Gothenburg, Sweden on June 27, 2015 after covering 38,739 nm in nine months and visiting 11 ports and every continent.
AFP/Lisbon, Portugal
Nine years after his boat sunk at the same stage and a competing team rescued his crew, Dutchman Bouwe Bekking emerged triumphant yesterday when Team Brunel won the transatlantic seventh leg in the Volvo Ocean Race.
His Team Brunel challengers edged out Spanish rivals MAPFRE by just 22 minutes after nine days and 11 hours at sea, having set out from Newport, Rhode Island for the Portuguese capital of Lisbon, 2,800 nautical miles away.
The result offers a slim chance that Bekking, 51, could win the race at the seventh time of asking after first contesting it in 1985-86.
Team Brunel now lie six points behind overall race leaders, Abu Dhabi Ocean Racing, who could only finish fifth in the stage, with two legs to sail.
The near flawless performance will also help Bekking forget the day in May 2006 when he was forced to order the abandonment of his boat, Movistar, in that year’s race after it started taking on water.
Movistar eventually sunk to the bottom of the Atlantic never to be recovered and a rival team, ABN AMRO TWO, rescued Bekking’s shaken crew.
Bekking was understandably more focused on the here and now at dawn on Wednesday after he and his veteran Australian navigator, Andrew Cape, steered Team Brunel to their second leg triumph of this 12th edition of the 41-year-old offshore event. They also won leg two from Cape Town to Abu Dhabi.
“We sailed a tremendous leg but just at the end when there was no wind, it was getting a bit gnarly,” Bekking told reporters. “However, we pulled it off.”
Behind the leading two, Dongfeng Race Team (China) lost out in an even closer battle for third spot with Team Alvimedica (Turkey/USA) by 55 seconds.
The result is costly for Dongfeng, who had been hoping to make big inroads into Abu Dhabi’s overall event lead. They now lie five points behind the Emirati boat in second place, but only one clear of Team Brunel.
Dongfeng’s French skipper Charles Caudrelier angrily blamed himself after a botched tack for finishing fourth in a leg they had led for long periods.
“I’m feeling very bad, very upset and very sad,” he told reporters. “Most of all, I’m upset with myself because my crew did a great job and I made a huge mistake - and I don’t accept mistakes. We really missed a chance in this leg with Abu Dhabi Ocean Racing finishing fifth.”
The all-women’s crew of Team SCA (Sweden) finished sixth, some four hours 22 minutes after the leaders.
The fleet will now be joined in the eighth leg from Lisbon to Lorient (France) on June 7 by Team Vestas Wind.
The Danish boat has been rebuilt since crashing into an Indian Ocean reef on November 29 during leg two and arrived by truck early on Wednesday in Lisbon.
The nine-month race’s final two legs take the seven boats to France (Lorient) and then Sweden (Gothenburg), the latter via a pit-stop in The Hague. In all, the fleet will have covered 38,739nm and visited 11 ports around the world when the event is concluded on June 27 in Gothenburg.
(low points wins, In-Port Race Series splits ties): 1. Abu Dhabi Ocean Racing 16 pts, 2. Dongfeng Race Team (China) 21, 3. Team Brunel (Netherlands) 22, 4. MAPFRE (Spain) 26, 5. Team Alvimedica (Turkey/US) 27, 6. Team SCA (Sweden) 41, 7. Team Vestas Wind (Denmark) 52 (DNS).
