Survival is the name of the game

The ABN Amro boats bombed in the last in-port race and will need confidence boosting efforts today before the perils of the Southern Ocean. Picture / Reuters

With Antarctic winds, ice and mountainous seas awaiting, ABN Amro One skipper Mike Sanderson says the aim for many in leg two of the round-the-world race will be simple - survival.

The 6100-nautical-mile leg from Cape Town to Melbourne starts on January 2. Before then the seven teams will line up in the second in-port race today.

Sanderson's team, who include five New Zealanders, won the opening leg and set a world 24-hour record for the most miles sailed by a monohull along the way.

And their development team, ABN Amro Two, finished second.

More than half the fleet suffered gear failure on the new 21m boats, which for the first time feature canting keels.

Three teams suffered damage in a storm on the first night and limped into ports. Two (Pirates of the Caribbean and movistar) were so badly battered they had to retire and ship their boats to Cape Town.

But the first leg of the Volvo Ocean Race is a doddle compared with the second, where teams face icebergs, angry seas and volatile weather.

Despite his rivals' reliability issues, Sanderson has no qualms about heading down into the deep, dark Southern Ocean.

"It is going to take some serious responsibility though," he said from Cape Town. "It is no longer an act of bravery. If you think you are 10 foot tall and bulletproof you can cause a lot of damage to everyone - if not wipe them all out.

"It is now a game of keeping the boat in one piece, even if that perhaps means being prepared to fall behind a little to lower your risk-taking.

"The problem with these canting keels is that you don't know when it is all going to go bad. You can be sailing along in 20 knots and have a failure and there is nothing you could have done to prevent it."

The key for teams on the second leg is to get their boats south as quickly as possible into the winds that swirl around the bottom of the planet.

"It is going to be incredibly physical," Sanderson said. "It is the place with the biggest waves in the world. It is very extreme. There is the ice. There are the squalls. It is a long way from land.

"We broke the 24-hour record in 25 to 30 knots of wind, so if we get down there and it is blowing 40 plus then we have got a whole new set of cards to play with."

But before Sanderson's team worry about the Southern Ocean, they first have to conquer the coast off Cape Town in today's in-port race.

Both ABN Amro teams bombed in the opening in-port race in Spain, finishing last and second to last, although light conditions did not exactly favour their Juan Kouyoumdjian-designed boats.

"It is funny [that] people think these boats go like a bullet offshore and are slow inshore. That is not how we think of it at all. We have an extra grinding pedestal for inshore; we have one of the fastest canting-keel systems in the fleet for inshore."

For the moment, though, Sanderson is happy to reflect on leg one. "It's hard not to get too excited about the first leg. The boat was going quite nicely. It was a lot faster reaching than what most people thought."

Volvo Ocean Race

* Next in-port race: Today, Cape Town

* Leg Two: From Cape Town to Melbourne starts on January 2. Points

* ABN Amro One (Netherlands, right) 11.5

* Brasil 1 (Brazil) 10.5

* Ericsson Racing (Sweden) 10.5

* ABN Amro Two (Netherlands) 9.5

* ING Real Estate Brunel (AUST) 4.5

* Pirates of the Caribbean (United States) 3.5

* movistar (Spain) 3