News

August 19, 2007

The Volvo Ocean Race is the Round the World race par excellence, and as the teams battle though the difficult doldrums and the high seas, dramas are expected. But the 2005-06 edition threw up more than they could chew for some of the teams…almost a day after the start of the leg 1 the fleet of Volvo Open 70’s set off for the South African port of Cape Town, but not all of them made it – at least not aboard the VO 70’s they set off on.

Mean Machine downwind trimmer Jono Swain has a particularly vivid memory of the Portuguese port of Portimao, venue for the fourth and penultimate event in this year’s Breitling MedCup Circuit.



Barely hours into Leg 1 of the famously treacherous race he found himself and the rest of his crew on Movistar headed towards land after they suffered some serious keel damage: “It was only 14 hours into the Volvo race and our first leg was all but over with hydraulic-ram free-floating inside the boat, a cracked bulkhead and a third of the rudder and canard missing! We headed towards Portimao unsure of exactly what damage had been done to the boat. Once she was out of the water it was clear she’d hit something. We were there for about two weeks, working night and day to fix the boat, but eventually we retired and got the boat ready to be shipped down to Cape Town.”

Coming back to Portimao may bring back lots of memories for trimmer Jono Swain, but the local knowledge will definitely stand him in good stead in the first MedCup event in Atlantic waters. He says the TP52 team are eager to make an impression in Portugual: “We were not happy with our overall performance in the Copa del Rey and obviously want to improve on that. Palma is mostly a one-way track and you have to be able to hold your lane to get to the correct side; hopefully Portimao will be a bit more of an even venue.”



With an experienced crew and boat, as well a Fastnet record for three of the crew (tactician Ray Davies, Dirk de Ridder and Jules Salter onboard ICAP Leopard), the team have everything to fight for.

“At this point we are trying to tweak our boat to its’ limit in order to stay in touch with the new boats. Now we know how most of the other guys felt last season – only a few of them were virtually our sister-ships!” , Jono Swain added.

With a Breitling MedCup 2006 title as well as some race wins in this year’s Circuit, the Mean Machine team know they’ve got the experience and the know-how to win.

Hopefully this time Jono Swain will leave Portimao with some warmer memories than he came with.