YACHTING
John Young
When Columbus was hanging around the Portuguese court trying to find a sponsor for his yacht to cross the Atlantic, King Joo II lied to him about the location of the Cape of Good Hope. Knowing that the information would get back to Spain, the king told Columbus it was 10 degrees further south than it actually is.
Skipper Lisa McDonald and her all-female crew of Amer Sport Too must have felt that King Joo’s ghost had moved Cape Town as they ploughed through mountainous seas and head-winds for weeks on end.
They are glad to have the first leg of the Volvo Ocean Race behind them (upwards of 7 000 miles which Lisa describes as a “good training leg”) as they prepare to leave Cape Town for Sydney on Sunday.
“Normally once you get to Brazil,” says Lisa, “you pull out the spinnaker and race to Cape Town at fantastic speeds.” Instead they faced “quite a job” against the wind. “You are forever bracing yourself against the bulkheads, using every muscle just to stand upright.”
She compares the motion to being trapped in a rogue underground train racing sharply around corners. “What people forget is that we don’t just drop anchor at night, this is a 24-hour job.”
Race medical adviser Dr Rudi Rodrigues says: “These sailors can burn up to 5 000 calories a day, which gives you an idea of the stresses they are under.”
The crews of the eight 60-footers in the race are the best in the world but the Amer Sport Too team has oceans of experience and McDonald is confident of improving on their eighth position: “This fleet is really tough and we were happy to be within arm’s reach.”
There are no time penalties this year, only points for position.
United States-born McDonald has raced in two America’s Cups, as has watch leader Katie Pettibone and the core of the crew were part of the all-female EF Education crew in the 1997/98 race. Marie-Claude Heys is one of the most experienced sailors in the race. The 13 crew members are drawn from seven countries, although with professional sailors moving about so much, their accents are hard to place.
For the Sydney leg the competitive element has been spiced up by the promotion of McDonald’s English husband Neal to the post of skipper of Assa Abloy.
I found McDonald at sunset at a Waterfront eatery “repairing the body and preparing for the next leg”, somewhat oddly within sight of the yacht she had been strapped to for 38 days! But then these are professional sailors who “are crazy enough to do it in our spare time too”.
It seems there is at least one advantage in having an all-female team. “We are not as big eaters as the boys, so our meals lasted longer.” And they don’t object to being called girls? “We are not a bunch of old women,” was the laughing response.
The winner of the first leg, Illbruck, kept the lead in the face of two on-shore protests this week. The first protest against an “unauthorised” website was withdrawn. The second related to a weedcutter. That protest was upheld but the committee ruled that time gained had not affected positions. Illbruck was ordered to pay a fine of 1 000 and remove the modification.