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Brasil 1 take Volvo Ocean Race leg
YOUR E-MAIL ALERTSROTTERDAM, Netherlands -- Brasil 1 have won the eighth leg of the round-the-world Volvo Ocean Race, just three minutes ahead of ABN AMRO ONE. Several dozen spectator boats greeted the 70-foot yachts off the Dutch coast near Rotterdam as they sailed across the line shortly after 2318 GMT on Friday, illuminated by a full moon. "We only knew we could win in the last moments of the race," said Brasil 1 skipper Torben Grael. "The wind had increased and normally ABN AMRO ONE would overtake in these conditions ... It wasn't until we saw the finish line that we knew that we had won." Brasil 1's Dutch navigator Marcel van Triest added that the crew had worked hard to keep ABN AMRO ONE at bay, who have already clinched an overall win. "Every time the breeze picked up a little bit, it's like this truck rolling over you.. We fight really hard to get them back by two miles, three miles, then the breeze picks up and they're back," he said. "The finish was very welcome. It couldn't have come any sooner." Spectators set off red flares to celebrate the end of a 1,500 nautical mile leg that took days longer to complete than anticipated with the boats at times just drifting in the current without wind. Meals on board were rationed and organisers were forced to shorten the course and switch the in-port race to Sunday as the fleet sailed as little as 100 miles (160 km) a day on their way from Portsmouth around Britain and Ireland. Earlier in the race, ABN AMRO TWO had set the world monohull speed record, covering 563 miles in 24 hours during leg two from Cape Town to Melbourne. "After so much high-intensity sailing, 30,000 miles around the world, this leg has been agonisingly slow for all the teams," Paul Cayard, skipper of Disney's Pirates of the Caribbean, said earlier this week. "We have not gotten one splash on the deck in five days," Cayard said. Brasil 1, ABN AMRO ONE and Ericsson, who came in third, broke away from the rest of the fleet north of Scotland and were never more than a few miles apart. Pirates of the Caribbean finished fourth almost 12 hours after the leaders, followed by Brunel and ABN AMRO TWO. Brasil 1's win leaves the team in third place overall, but with the in-port race on Sunday and the final leg yet to come, they could move up to second place. ABN AMRO ONE clinched overall victory when it came in first on leg seven, the Atlantic crossing from New York to Portsmouth last month. On that leg, the ABN AMRO team suffered the death of Dutch sailor Hans Horrevoets, washed overboard from sister boat ABN AMRO TWO. The Volvo Ocean Race, previously known as the Whitbread race, ends in Gothenburg in Sweden later this month. 
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