It is a struggle even turning on this computer right now. My body was run down and the only thing that I am having success in concentrating on is harbor cruising on my power boat and golf.

I now know that I have heard it all. This race has been extended!!!!! The race organizers didn’t think the previous 37,000 miles were long enough so this leg has been extended. Oh my god.

What makes it a bit of a bummer is the fact that we are leading and the wind is getting lighter and the two light air rocket ships (Telefonica Black and Blue) are right behind us. Oh well, never easy.

We have sailed a solid leg to date. Need to keep it up. Will report after the finish. A 30 mile triangle to do now and it is full on.

Just came down for a snack and a layer of clothes and to catch a breath.

Tacking, got to go.

- Kenny

We are racing again. I have to admit that this leg is a tough one to really get fired up about. That is until the starting gun goes of course. Then it is full on, no matter what is at stake.

Of course I would be remiss without saying that the send off in Stockholm was as fantastic as the stay itself. There is clearly an air of finality surrounding this race right now. The leg awards banquet in Stockholm and the final exit to the race course really started to feel like the end is near. This adventure is nearly over, but we still have one leg to do first. Although we simply have to finish this leg in order to get our second overall, you would never know it on the boat. The boys want to end in style.

There is clearly a lack of pressure aboard. That showed with a mistake when we sailed up to the coast of Estonia. Another country that I don’t think I would be ever mentioning in a sailboat racing blog. Estonia. Wild. Anyway, we approached with about a half mile lead that we had gained off the starting line and held all the way across until reaching land. We had a decision to make, and decided to get into the coast and cut through a large rock pile to the beach in order to get to the expected right shift. Problem was, once we committed to go inside the rock pile the wind started to die slowly. No way out but to continue and we sailed in to lighter air while most the other boats gained about a mile and a half on us outside our line, and our friendly rocks.

So, we are now battling back and have crossed to yet another country. Finland. Tick another country box. Actually, it would be fun some day to retrace our path and see how many countries we have sailed in close proximity too. My guess is that it is a lot more that we would imagine.
Estonia, Vietnam, China, Taiwan- countries that aren’t exactly considered as being hosts to some of the worlds highest profile racing events. No slight on any sailing in any of those countries. Not in the least. Just don’t have Vietnam Race Week on my calendar yet, and as soon as this goes out I am guessing that I will have a e-mail with the time and date of that event in my in box.

Anyway, a long beat to Russia. This race wouldn’t be complete without one more long beat. Nice flat water though. Very civilized sailing with no water on deck at all. The finish line can’t come soon enough. There is some serious celebrating that needs to take place.

- Kenny

We just have to finish this leg to get second overall. This leg, the pressure is off. We just have to get points for finishing so that we get second overall, and be really, really proud of that. If we come in to St Petersburg in seventh place, we’ll get two points for finishing the leg. If Telefonica Blue win the leg, they’ll get eight points. That’s a differential of six points. But we already have a 6.5 point lead on them. We get to go sailing, have fun, enjoy being with our buddies for the last time and go try to win a boat race.

Of course we would like to win the leg. If we were playing checkers here on the dock it would be a blood match. With all of these sailors on these boats, it’s all about the competition. Whether second overall is at stake or not anymore - which it isn’t, for all practical purposes - we still wanna go win the leg. That’s what we do; it’s what we’re trained to do.

It’s shocking that this is the last leg of the Volvo Ocean Race. It seems like only two weeks ago we were in Alicante, Spain, with this enormous thing ahead of us, and it was really difficult to comprehend. Here we are now at the end, almost 37,000 miles later. I can’t believe it, it’s actually stunning. I don’t think it’ll hit us until well after the finish. We’re excited to get this over with but it will be emotional. You start looking around at your team mates thinking ‘this is the last time the team will be together…’ As we’re constituted right now, this is the last send off we will have as a group. Stockholm has been spectacular, the PUMA team have had a great stopover here, but we’re ready to get this done.

-Ken Read

The drag race is on. I hope and pray that the wind holds out. We have all kinds of conflicting weather data, but reality is that there is a 16 knot westerly pushing us toward the finish and we are very happy it is here.

Today (really there is no night so I guess today is all day) has been a bit of a mix up. Early this morning we were jibing around the southern tip of Sweden and we got ourselves a bit close to shore and the Ericsson twins made a gain on us. In fact, E4 passed us there. We got offshore about a half mile behind E4 and a mile ahead of E3. The wind picked up a bit into the mid twenties and E4 started to show her stuff. We hung on and have been within a mile all day.

Then the wind completely and fairly unexpectedly crapped on both of us. Reaching along at 15 knots and bang, on the wind in five knots. Where did that come from? E3 watched the whole thing from a couple miles behind and literally sailed around us both. This is not a good trend for il mostro

But, in the weirdness, we got some leverage to the west of the Ericsson boys and the wind filled back in from the old direction and we just got around the bow of both of them reaching to the finish. Very exciting and all on right now. These two boats aren’t slow so we have our hands full. Hopefully just let the old girl hunt a bit and all will be well.

Sorry, this is all I have time for. There is plenty happening on deck. Later

- Kenny

The start of this leg was madness. The number of boats on the water watching, the starting line pinned up against the rocks, the crowd of people on the rocks watching, the conditions- which went completely flat half way up the first beat. Then…THE COLLISION. T-Blue with THE ROCK. Enough to make you sick to your stomach watching. A grotesque sight that you never want to see or be part of.

We were following about 10 boat lengths behind T-Blue in second place heading south when it happened. Capey was sitting next to me and saying that we were going to have to come up or down in the near future. We were going about 13 knots. And then…BANG. Their entire transom came out of the water right in front of us. I said to Capey, “UP OR DOWN!!!!!” to which he said UP!!! We climbed off of the stricken boat by about three lengths and made it through.

Bottom line is that no one wants to see something like that happen and for sure we are thrilled that no one was hurt. We hope they get back in the race by Stockholm. It just isn’t the same without the entire fleet together for the finish in St Petersburg.

That’s it for now. More of a report of the racing later.

Kenny

I don’t know where to start. Many people have asked if I could write a book about this around the world adventure and the truth is I could write a book about this leg only! It has been an amazing ride- and to think it has ONLY FOUR AND A HALF DAYS!!!

Without getting into the gory details of the entire leg, let me re-start from yesterday when I wrote one of the most depressing blogs of my Volvo career. Trying to sound upbeat was hard. WE WERE DARK. We were wondering how we got into the mess we were in, and we had to split from the fleet- certainly not something we wished to do. But we also had a plan B and we were going to execute it come hell or high water. Capey was on his game and WE HAD A PLAN.

The low pressure center was clearly positioned more east than we thought it was, and that was the way it gobbled us up. So in looking back on it, this was also the reason we could escape to the west quickly as well. Two hours of near drifting in the middle and the most horrible three hour position report possible with the entire fleet putting something like 35 miles on us. Well, IT was only to get worse because I think it was the same for the next three scheds as well.

Next came THE GALE. Yup, 40 knots upwind again while reading the reports that the rest of the fleet was having a lovely sail to Sweden. This was the price we had to pay to get to the northerlies that would eventually catapult us BACK INTO THE GAME, and came they did- the high side of the low where the wind died to 20 knots and we had a roaring reach back to the fleet while it was their turn to sit in the middle of the center of the low. But the final spot was still quite unclear.

Now we needed a final BIT OF LUCK, and finally lady luck was on our side. We were well positioned offshore the north side of Denmark to get into more breeze, hopefully. But we didn’t expect a 20 knot squall that shot us down the coast on a reach while the rest of the fleet was inshore beating off the beach. JACKPOT!!! We had our chance and took it. The next sched we were back in third and knew that we had a bit of reaching to go and we had an outside chance at the Dragons in that stuff.

And reach we did. Right through another rain squall and when it lifted, there was the Dragon about 100 meters to leeward- scared the heck out of the group on deck! We got over the top of them and defended to the most improbably SECOND PLACE FINISH I have ever seen or been a part of. And I know I keep saying that, but I mean it, and it is driving us crazy that we can’t just sail normally. The toll it takes both physically and mentally is unreal. Tonight’s sleep will be a good one.

Finally, a couple comments about this team- especially ANDREW CAPE. We all had a chance to quit on this one. Things looked bleak. Our broken spinnaker turned into an unlucky mistake and things looked really bad. REALLY BAD. But Capey said we could follow them all in, or we could go get our ass kicked by Mother Nature and have a shot at them. I agreed of course and off we went. Not a complaint in the bunch. We went for it and were rewarded. I can’t thank this sailing team enough for their determination and desire. I am very proud of this team. VERY PROUD.

Now off to bed. I think we have to do this again really soon. Maybe some day before the end of this adventure we will just do something normal. I doubt it.

- Kenny

We have been in a heavy-weight prize fight for days now. Today we sailed back into third and then amazingly blew up our big spinnaker when sailing downwind just after the Rotterdam loop. Following that, a chain reaction occurred and the culmination of it all is that we have made a complete split from the fleet and we are left hoping beyond hope that this new tactic works.

After the chute exploded we had to put up smaller sails and in turn we had to sail a higher course than the rest of the fleet. We aren’t allowed to carry extra big spinnakers and so when that sail goes you are in trouble. It just broke, right below the head patch, with absolutely no warning. So, we simply lost touch with the rest of the fleet by sailing higher. We worked the boat all morning as hard as we could to stay in touch with the small storm spinnaker. Then all of a sudden the wind started to lighten. You’d think a quick jibe to sail out of the light air and then you’d be back into the pressure right? No problem, still plenty of wind? And actually a good shift to jibe on. Wrong. It got lighter…then lighter…and before you knew it we were drifting. The center of the low had engulfed us. Unreal.

So now our best hope is to try and punch through the center of the low and wait for the rest of the group to hit their light air eventually. We simply can’t get back to where the rest of the fleet is so drastic action unfortunately is required. It may work, it may not. We will keep fighting though…

It is interesting how many times the most obvious tactical move may not be made by a certain boat, and almost always there is a good explanation as to how or why the decision was made. And most often that decision is because there was something out of the ordinary that happened that simply changed the way you had to play the game. We have had our fair share of tough breaks on this boat and they have routinely occurred at some pretty inopportune times. And the team always rallies to make the best of all situations and we typically have our best legs at that time.

We will just try to take it in our stride. It just hurts because this is exactly what we didn’t want to do. We had Telefonica Blue at the back of the fleet and we were making ground toward the front. Ouch.

We have to try and make the best of this. Sure, the team is down right now but all realize that we can’t quit and need to press on. Sometimes it just doesn’t go your way. Today may have been one of those days for us, as time will only tell.

-Kenny