The PUMA Ocean Racing powered by BERG crew charged to the front of the fleet when they departed Itajai, Brazil, and held on to the lead through the finish of Leg 6 of the Volvo Ocean Race 2011-12. PUMA’s Mar Mostro crossed the line in Miami, Fla., USA at 14:14:00 local/18:14:00 UTC on Wednesday, May 9, to win a second consecutive leg in front of a hometown crowd. The team completed Leg 6 in 17 days, 1 hour, 13 minutes and 59 seconds, edging out second-place CAMPER with Emirates Team New Zealand.

“Hello Miami! This is unbelievable,” said skipper Ken Read, from Newport, Rhode Island, USA, upon crossing the finish line. “It’s great to be back in the U.S. And, we’ve actually been to Miami before on this boat, so this marks our complete circumnavigation of the globe.

“This was about a stressful a leg as it can get,” Read continued. “The guys on CAMPER sailed really well and it was touch-and-go for a lot of the time. But, I couldn’t be more proud of our team – just an incredibly good job.”

As the U.S. entry in this year’s race, PUMA made an exciting entrance into Miami with three Americans onboard – Read, trimmer Rome Kirby (Newport, R.I.) and media crew member Amory Ross (Newport, R.I.). The Miami arrival marked a complete lap around the planet for PUMA’s Mar Mostro as the crew made a training run from their home port of Newport to Miami in May 2011.

“It’s fantastic – I’m psyched to be home,” said Kirby. “The leg was nice sailing for a lot of it, but also a bit frustrating. We had some pretty light air sailing that was tough. But, coming into the U.S. in first place – you can’t beat it.”

PUMA departed Itajai on April 22 and led the fleet on the start of the leg. They were the first team to reach the equator, crossing it on April 30 for the fourth and final time this race. With CAMPER within sight several days throughout the leg, PUMA held off their charge to finish just over an hour ahead for the 4,800 nautical mile leg.

With the win, PUMA added 30 points to total 147 overall in this year’s race. Team Telefónica will maintain the overall lead upon completion of the leg.

PUMA’s Mar Mostro also captured the IWC Schaffhausen Speed Record Challenge trophy for Leg 6. On May 3, the crew posted a 511 nautical mile run to win the award for the third time in the race, having also won for Leg 3 and 4.

PUMA’s Mar Mostro, built and launched in Newport, R.I., departed U.S. waters on July 3, 2011, with the start of the Transatlantic Race 2011 from Newport to Lizard Point, Cornwall, U.K. The crew made a training run to Miami and visited the city on May 13, 2011.

Shannon Falcone (Falmouth Harbor, Antigua) and a member of the ORACLE Racing team, joined the PUMA crew on board for Leg 6, taking the place of Casey Smith (Brisbane, Australia) who injured his back during Leg 5. Smith is expected to return for the PORTMIAMI In-Port Race on Saturday, May 19.

QUOTING KEN READ:

“This is now three legs of my Volvo career where I haven’t shaved, and all three legs we’ve won.”

[Source: Volvo Ocean Race] Ken Read and the team on PUMA Ocean Racing powered by BERG are flying into the last 100 miles to the Miami finish line at average speeds of almost 20 knots, with CAMPER with Emirates Team New Zealand (Chris Nicholson/AUS) in their rear view mirror, 18.10 nm behind. But it has been a tortuous night and Ken Read and his men came perilously close to losing the lead.

As PUMA and CAMPER drifted towards the turning point at Eleuthera on Tuesday evening, the PUMA crew prepared for the worst, as they became becalmed close to the beach, sitting dead in the water. After a quick gybe and a change to a different sail, the team tried their chances further offshore, but again ran out of wind as CAMPER appeared on the horizon.

“At this point we’re watching them sail down our line in utter amazement. We’re drifting in complete glass-off conditions. There is not a ripple on the water and all eyes are on the advancing red sails,” wrote PUMA’s Media Crew Member (MCM) Amory Ross.

Then, as the PUMA crew sat drifting helplessly, CAMPER too ran out of wind. When the sun set, the wind returned and although CAMPER were now too close for comfort, PUMA had held on to the lead.

The leading pair clawed their way around the Eleuthera Light just an hour apart at 0210 and 0310 GMT this morning, and PUMA is now stretching away towards a finish later today.

For CAMPER with Emirates Team New Zealand, the finish can’t come quickly enough, having spent 70 of the last 88 days on board due to their pit stop in Chile to repair the boat during Leg 5 and their subsequent late arrival into Itajaí in Brazil.

Meanwhile, the fight for the third podium place continues between Groupama (Franck Cammas/FRA) and Telefónica (Iker Martínez/ESP). After choosing different tactics to pass Cat Island on Tuesday, they have reconnected and Groupama still leads Telefónica on the approach to Eleuthera Light, but only by eight miles. They are both over 100 nm behind PUMA.

Abu Dhabi Ocean Racing (Ian Walker/GBR) are watching the action from the sidelines over 160 nm astern. “The pressure should build the longer we are out here, so perhaps we can come flying up from behind to make it a tight finish,” said MCM Nick Dana wistfully.

As PUMA and CAMPER count down the final hours of the 4,800 nm Leg 6 from Itajaí in Brazil to Miami, Ken Read and his men will attempt to apply the basketball adage of keeping themselves between their opponent [CAMPER] and the hoop. “Sure sounds easy, but when you can’t see your opponent anymore it is like playing basketball in the pitch black and trying to stay with your man,” Read said today.

The leading boat is expected to arrive in Miami around 1600 GMT today.

[Source: Puma Ocean Racing] There’s very little we have in common with the average working member of society. We have no desk, we have no morning commute, there are no sick days, and there are certainly no weekends. But one thing we have in common this week is a shared fear of Monday. You’re terrified of Monday – and today is Monday – but we too have been looking at this Monday on the calendar, dreading its arrival. On this Monday our beloved winds will likely leave us one final time, gradually over the course of the day’s passing.

The complete easing of our breeze should begin this morning, and because we’re the furthest west it will impact us first, again opening the door for CAMPER and Telefónica to eat into our lead from their trailing positions. Tom is saying tonight could be a full on drift-off, and while this leg has been full of back-to-front compression scenarios, this one is just a few days from the finish line and that makes it that much more dangerous.

Our saving grace is that – unlike previous compressions – the attacking boats will be geographically restricted by the islands, and at some point they will be forced to sail into the same waters an winds as us. Passing lanes and open-ocean leverage that could allow for dramatic lead changes will be much harder to find as our course to the turning mark at Eleuthera is a relatively straight one. While it does nothing to change the fact that we’ll eventually be without wind, it does comfort us to know that it’s a fate the others will likely suffer too.

So Monday it is, and it’s going to be a big one. In all likeliness the boat that best handles this final high-pressure hurdle gets the jump on the short sprint to Miami, a jump that could quickly prove insurmountable. Time is running short and the remaining mileage is low, so we’ll be sure to shake off the easy-sailing casualness for the final stages of a leg home to America we very much want to win!

[Source: Puma Ocean Racing] I’m not going to say much about the weather…it’s more than cooperating and I don’t want to jinx it. We have one more area of projected drifting on our way to Miami, and I worry that if I go off talking about how nice of a surprise yesterday was, how incredibly perfect the sailing was – especially when the early outlook looked so bleak – I worry I might eliminate the chance of it happening again when we hit the final hurdle of high-pressure tomorrow.

Instead, I’ll mention a few finer observations from Mar Mostro life on our way west.

1. The so-called SuperMoon is, in fact, super. Man was it big and bright coming up over the horizon! Blinding. Sailing last night was no different than sailing during the day: you could see waves and wind on the water, and the sails were lit well enough for strobe-free trimming. We wondered what affect, good or bad, it might have on the tides and currents through the countless Caribbean and Bahamian islands we’ll be passing over the next couple of days.

2. Numero uno is casual. We’ve arguably been leading this leg since it started, and most would assume that creates an environment of high stress; there is always more to lose than gain. But to the contrary, these have been some of the most relaxing and enjoyable 14 days of this race. Maybe that’s because it’s warm and we’re sailing a Volvo 70 without shirts or shoes, but I think it’s because we’re confident and comfortable, happy and loose. Team chemistry has always been great but our performance so far this leg has helped to affirm our abilities. Time on deck is flying by while preoccupied with stories, debates, and lengthy laughs, and sometimes it’s hard to believe we’re in the middle of a race.

3. Rationing for a Wednesday night or Thursday morning finish is finished. Yesterday I split our large chicken tikka meal in half and made up the difference with leftover mashed potato powder. The day before that we had leftover protein bars for lunch. So now we have two extra meals, plus lots of extra cereal and bars to fill the un-provisioned time at sea. Not that we purposefully pack light or consistently misread the routing, but arriving late has been a bit of normality this race. Rationing like this gets easier every time and it all feels very under control now. No panic whatsoever. Even managed to squirrel away a few extra savoury snacks for the guys, too, but that’s a surprise! Closely monitoring coffee consumption…might be tight on that one.

4. Where’s all the wildlife? We’ve soon almost nothing out here. One whale, a few dolphins, and one jumping mahi. Are flying fish top dog?? They running the show? Seems like those little guys are all we see…

5. Sick of Sargasso. The weed’s still everywhere and it seems we spend most of our time trying to keep it off the rudders.

6. iPods. They’re changing hands faster than we can keep track of, and I haven’t seen mine in a few days. Tony woke up to three or four in his bunk-side holder the other day. It’s hard to imagine what this race would have been like without them.

Anyways, today should be another great one and hopefully our good fortune continues! The boat’s going fast, everyone’s happy, and we’re privileged enough to be sailing through some of the nicest waters in the world. Life is good

[Source: Puma Ocean Racing] Our daily routines are predictable enough. Each day is more or less the same and at some point day 17 begins to feel like day 12, which very much felt like day 6. One variable of inconsistent kind though, and one of great interest to everyone onboard, is Tom’s ETA, or estimated finishing date. Our predicted arrival is something we all want to know and for a variety of reasons, but it’s a figure that is also in continuous flux.

It can be amazingly difficult to predict when you’re going to arrive at a destination 3,000 miles away in a landscape of geographic uncertainty, but today’s software, weather files, and boat performance profiles combine to give it an honest try. There are family flights to book, boat repairs to schedule, food and fuel to manage, and the high hopes of the 11 of us waiting for a burger, beer, and a proper shower, and they all hinge on a very simple process.

Somewhere in the world somebody begins by analysing the weather. Their findings are digitized into “grib” models, a virtual record of predicted winds spanning up to several weeks out for the entire globe. These files are loaded into the onboard routing software that use our current location and our boat’s performance polars (tables that suggest what speeds Mar Mostro should attain at any combination of wind speed and wind angle) to best map our course to the next waypoint.

Shannon Falcone trims the main for Jono Swain on the helm. Photo copyright Amory Ross / Puma Ocean Racing

Obviously, there is more than one way to decipher the weather, so there are multiple models to choose from. With each update (several times a day) Tom downloads either the “EC,” (short for…ECWF), or the “GFS,” (…God Forged Scheduling?), loads it into the software, and out comes an ETA. Routing doesn’t take certain things into consideration, things like a rough sea state that would prevent us from reaching our predicted polar speeds, so there’s a certain degree of human interpretation for Tom before he decides on a route and a date, but eventually a day is picked. The closer we get, the more accurate the prediction power is, but one thing that’s for sure is that we can never be sure.

In the context of this leg, it looks like we’ll be one or two days late, so it’s time to start squirreling away some food again, just like we did on the last leg. Extra bars for lunch instead of a meal when the wind is light, split the chicken tikka – a notoriously large serving – into two meals, things like that. It’s not the models’ fault, or the forecasters that make them, because weather is weather and it changes. You can’t suggest that conditions are “supposed” to be anything, because they’re unpredictable by nature. All we can do is hope the models are more accurate than not!

[Source: Puma Ocean Racing] We still hate clouds. We hate them, and even the pretty ones too. They ruin our days and plague our nights, and they’ve just done it again. One massive, unavoidable green glob on the radar and an ominously dark splotch of horizon indicate imminent doom, but nothing can prepare you for the gut wrenching conclusion once it’s run its course and stolen your wind, hopes, and in this case, your hard fought lead.

After the last dose of calm calamity cut our advantage from 35 miles to 5, we extended on the trailing pair to see the margin of comfort return to the 30s. But yesterday was tough, and we spent much of it dodging rain on the horizon. Again our lead shrank. And now one final and frantic squall has left us virtually even with CAMPER and Telefónica. Not very encouraging, but nonetheless, it’s back to the task at hand.

We again find ourselves moving food, spares, sails, and personal gear to the front of the boat in just 2 knots of wind, praying something will fill our sad sails and get us the blazes out of here. We’re all up and we’ve literally gone through every sail on the boat during the last hour, but it’s done nothing to prolong the inevitable. There’s not enough wind to justify unfurling a jib, so we sit, floundering under main only, keel canted to one side to prevent the boom from sweeping uncontrollably across the deck.

Okay, moving on. I’m tired of talking about clouds, tired of thinking about clouds. Just hate ‘em! Going to go make some coffee for the fellas as it’s looking like it will be a long and crummy night. Thankfully, tomorrow is another day!

[Source: Puma Ocean Racing] Our time along Brazilian shores has not been brief – it’s an enormous coastline – and we continue to have chance encounters with other maritime vessels of all shapes and sizes. Oil rigs, oil ships, oil rig supply ships, oil ship supply ships, container ships, large fishing boats, small fishing boats, and boats that we know nothing of.

Early yesterday evening our course took us directly across the transom of a tiny wooden fishing boat, anchored no less than 50 miles from shore, and as we went by waving hello to four surprised locals at 18 knots, it’s impossible not to wonder if our new spectators have any comprehension of what they’ve witnessed. They have likely never laid eyes on a boat like ours, and likely never will again. A giant black jumping cat emblazoned on a tentacle-covered sailboat, a fast sailboat, faster than many powerboats. It must be bizarre but exhilarating, if only for a brief moment before we’re gone again, like a mysterious UFO just passing through.

Looking back on the six prior legs of this race, I wonder if the countless mariners we randomly intersect, lives we intermittently traverse in the middle of the worlds ocean: what did they do when they returned to land? Are they new PUMA Ocean Racing Facebook fans? Are they reading this update, avid followers of our plight like the sailors of the ZIM MONACO? Did they Instagram a photo of us from their fancy smart phone? Or not. Are we just an intense flash of a story on an otherwise typical workday for some seafarer that knows nothing of Volvo cars, PUMA clothing, carbon fiber, or the World Wide Web?

Puma' Mar Mostro putting miles under the sails towards Miami. Photo copyright Amor Ross / Puma Ocean Racing

There was the ship of long liners off Sri Lanka, forcing us into a hard preventative bear away and a close race mark like rounding (I don’t know what was more impressive, the stench from their hold or Tony’s reaction on the helm). There were the countless unlit dinghies in the Malacca Straits, clueless as to the danger a night in our path could present. There was the teeming port of Singapore; an evening spent dodging and weaving through hundreds (maybe thousands) of anchored 300-meter ships. There were the fishing boats off Japan and the fishing boats off the Solomons. There was the fleet of halogen-lit squidders near Chile and then the busy trans-South Atlantic shipping lanes, the very one that brought us to our ZIM MONACO friends and eventual Tristan salvation.

As we sail north through the Caribbean and finally arrive to very modern civilization in Florida, it’s hard not feeling a tinge of admiration for the simpler sailors we meet out here. Our brief exposure to their world on the sea is as much a surprise to us as we must be to them.

But I still wonder…do they have any idea what they’ve seen?? And where are they now…what have they done with their cell phone photos or word-of-mouth tall tales? Just how far in the world has the story of our Mar Mostro reached?

[Source: Puma Ocean Racing] CAMPER first appeared on the horizon two days ago and we managed to keep them there. But yesterday they kept coming, they kept getting bigger, and it seemed like there was nothing we could do to stop them. We were hemorrhaging miles and we knew it, losing bearing and range all the time.

So what do you do to stop the bleeding? You hit reset. We went back to pre-race training mentality and established a baseline setting for the boat, began treating our speed in relative terms, using CAMPER’s close proximity as anyone in a two-boat testing program would. We’d make a small change here, another there, and we’d monitor their vitals on our radar. If results were positive, we’d adjust our “base,” and if they showed no improvement, we’d advance to the next variable on the list.

This kind of testing is simple in theory but complex in execution. Boats are changing speeds all the time and it’s impossible to know if differences in performance are due to setup changes or things like wind and waves, conditions one might have that another does not. It can be hard to realize the effectiveness of modifications when you can’t regulate certain parameters, like weather.

Puma leads the Volvo Ocea Race fleet but can see Camper and Telefonica on their back. Photo copyright Amory Ross / Puma Ocean Racing

But we needed to try, and try we did. We started with simple mode changes: high and slow, low and fast, then somewhere in between. Nothing helped; they were always gaining. So we turned to our downwind sails and their trim. We compared our A5/GS (genoa staysail) combination to our A5/J4 (small jib) setup. Small gain found. Next we tried over-sheeting, then we tried over-easing, we tried a narrow slot, we tried a super-twisted setup. We played with daggerboard settings. We played with ballast location. If we could move it, it was moved. If we could adjust it, it was adjusted. And gradually, over the course of a day, we lessened the losses.

Finally, by the time they were abeam of us at a range of about five miles, we matched their speed. Coincidentally, about this time, wind speeds grew substantially. Whether our successes were the by-product of many small alterations or whether it was something as simple as getting the stronger winds they enjoyed all day…well, we’ll never know. But we do know that on day six of Leg 6, after more than a year of sailing Mar Mostro, we continue to learn about our boat. The education process never ends!