Volvo Ocean Race: Melbourne Inport Race
Sunday, 05 February 2006
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ABN AMRO ONE secured an impressive victory out on Port Philip Bay today after a fantastic performance and the closest racing yet, in the third in port race of the Volvo Ocean Race. After a very tight start with two boats over the line, it was all to play for in moderate and changeable winds. As the fleet blasted their way up the first beat it was Brasil 1 who took an early lead. However, after some slick teamwork and a slight increase in wind speed in the latter stages of the race it was ABN AMRO ONE who claimed line honours 2 hours and 28 minutes later. Mike Sanderson was clearly delighted as ABN AMRO ONE pulled into Melbourne’s Docklands: It was an unbelievable day out there today and a fantastic race. We got a shocking start and had to dig our way out of that but we always knew it was going to be a tricky one as we were going to be in our crossover range where everyone was going to be competitive - we had very little wind in Spain, lots of wind in Cape Town and this was in between. After the start we went well, we nailed a couple of nice shifts and we went nicely against the Pirates so that was good. When it came to it, we got a nice clean lane and we managed to settle down and really sail our own boat which is what we like. The Brazilians did an amazing job coming straight out of the blocks and were going fast. And that was an amazing effort considering that they only put their rig in at 1am this morning, so they were my heroes for the day. But for us, we were all pretty happy to cross the line first and pick up 3.5 more points.”

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