Volvo leg 8 finish

By Rich Roberts
For YachtRacing.com

GOTHENBURG---Vaelkommen hem. And how Swede it was!

The Volvo Ocean Race's first excursion into Scandinavia received the best
welcome home it could hope for early Thursday morning when Swedish entry
Assa Abloy led the most tightly packed finish of any phase of the global
races of the past three decades.

This major port city on Sweden's west coast not only is headquarters for
the automaker that runs what used to be the Whitbread Round the World Race
but was Assa Abloy's training base for the months leading up to last
September's start in England.

Assa Abloy, the nearest thing to a U.S. entry with three Americans on the
crew, was the first of five boats to emerge from the black horizon minutes
after midnight to complete Leg 8, an adventurous obstacle course of 1,075
nautical miles from La Rochelle up through the English Channel into the
North Sea.

With 8 to 10 knots of wind, only the white asymmetric headsail of the blue
and bronze boat was visible as it merged with more than a hundred waiting
spectator boats whose running lights formed a virtual offshore island.

Then a second boat came into view---at first unidentifiable in the dark but
with the red masthead lights of three others high above the sea tightly
bunched in its wake as it followed Assa Abloy up the Uttlyktsbatar River,
the main shipping channel of Scandinavia's largest port.

At the end Assa Abloy, named for its Sweden-based lockmaker sponsor, was
only 2 minutes 16 seconds ahead of Bermuda's Tyco, then it was 1:40 back to
Australia's News Corp, 1:11 to Germany's illbruck and 1:33 to
Italy/Finland's Amer Sports One. The top five of the eight-boat fleet
finished within a span of 6 minutes 50 seconds.

Assa Abloy's elapsed time for the leg was 4 days 7 hours 6 minutes 38
seconds---about a day and a half faster than anticipated, and especially
remarkable after Assa Abloy was delayed eight minutes at the start after
snagging the holding line on the starting line pin buoy.

Sweden's SEB and Norway's djuice finished within the next three hours,
leaving the all-woman Amer Sports Too as the only anticipated daylight
finisher sometime after mid-day Thursday.

Assa Abloy has more Americans aboard than any other boat. Mark Rudiger of
San Francisco is navigator/co-skipper, Mike Howard of Malibu is sail
trimmer/helmsman and Chris Larson of Annapolis is tactician/helmsman. The
skipper is Neal McDonald of the UK.

"It was a world-class effort by Assa Abloy all the way," Rudiger said. "We
never gave up."

It was Rudiger's task to pick the boat's way along the Dover coast, through
the forest of North Sea oil platforms and across the shoals, all the while
covering the rest of the fleet through dozens of tacks in headwinds off the
Norwegian shore.

The multi-national boat also has two Swedes: the veteran Magnus Olsson and
Klas Nylof.

"Magnus was more worried about SEB than anybody else," Howard said after
victory ceremonies. "He didn't want to lose to the other Swedish boat. We
had to remind him we were racing those other guys, too."

The competition was so tight that the crews hardly slept the last 24 hours
of the 4 1/2-day run.

"I came on watch at 10:30 last night," Howard, 52, said, "so I've been
awake the last 27 hours."

Arriving at the Volvo Race Village at Eriksberg, the boat was greeted by
hundreds of spectators lining the piers amid a display of fireworks and a
shower of spray from a fireboat.

Closest finishes previously were two-minute margins by Grant Dalton's New
Zealand Endeavour over Chris Dickson's Tokio in 1993-94 and Dalton's Merit
Cup over Dennis Conner's Toshiba in '97-98---both at Auckland. But those
finishes involved only two boats, not more than half the fleet.

There was an unconfirmed report that illbruck was pressing Assa Abloy
tenaciously until the last couple of miles when it fouled a sail change and
dropped two positions.

Assa Abloy has won three of the eight legs but still trails American
skipper John Kostecki's illbruck, a four-time winner, for first place, 54
points to 49. The last leg down the Baltic Sea to Kiel, Germany will start
June 8.