...And bowman Pepe Ribes from Telefonica Blue sprays the crowd with champagne after winning the Volvo Ocean Race in-port race in a misty Boston, could it have been different?. Telephonica blue, dominant over light winds, led from start to finish in the in-port boat race. Bouwe Bekking, the team's offshore skipper and inshore tactician, was in the mood for understatements. "It could have been worse," he said. "We like this weather, but we still had to pull it off and we did. We made it a bit hard for ourselves on the second beat in the second race, when we had an easy lay and the chute came off. We had to tack back and reach into the gate mark. But we did well in difficult conditions."
Indeed, the wind shifted by as much as 40 degrees during the racing, while its speed danced anywhere between five and 12 knots. A thick fog swept the course in the second race for dramatic effect. "Not easy conditions," said Ericsson 4 skipper Torben Grael, a man who was also far from unhappy. Precious points.Telefonica Blue's four points enables them to shave half a point off overall race leader Ericsson 4 and eked out a three-point lead over third-placed PUMA which did not good on the home turf.
