António Fontes / Team AkzoNobel

gender Male
Annemike, trimming: Battling here. Don't want anyone between us and Plastics. Very important few hours. Witty: Looks like a photo finish, doesn't it? What other way would you want to finish the Volvo Ocean Race? He describes the position of the boats. Describes the possibilities of how the finish could play out. This has been an amazing mental, emotional roller coaster this race. In 47,000 miles not one thing has changed. As critical as I have been of the boats, and I will stand by that, this is the most amazing round the world race I've ever seen. For a whole bunch of different reasons. Antonio and Trystan grinning on the weather rail.Scallywag blasting in windy conditions with reefed main / J3. Antonio on the stern: Come and do the Volvo and see the world! He gestures at the waves. Witty at the nav station: Rubbish. We're last again. Three lasts in a row. Plus a did not finish. So basically we haven't got any points since New Zealand. So since we were third on the table we haven't got a point. Reaching on deck. Slomo wake. Witty: In 196 miles I get a cold beer, and a piece of steak I can use a knife and fork with, and I get a cuddle from Lynnie. Anniemieke on the stern rubs her hands. "If your hands are warm, your head is warm, your heart is warm." Witty: 30 years of yachting. I don't think I've ever seen a harsher penalty for one very small error, that could have actually not been an error as well. [Thought at first he was talking about Fish. :-( ] 10 miles maybe, even 50 miles wouldn't have been harsh. But we lost 100 miles the first 6 hours of the race, and we're going to finish 25 miles behind them. Slomo spray, wake. Witty: Quite a lot of traffic coming into Gothenburg, ships and stuff, separation zones. So my job the last two watches has been to sit in front of the computer and make sure we don't run into a tanker. Because that would put the icing on the cake, wouldn't it? Massive seas, raining, can't see 6 foot in front of you. 195 miles to go man. Slomo spray on deck.Stern cam shot with big wind. Double- (or triple- ?) reefed main. Instrument readout at nav station: TWS 38.4. Trystan, below, gets his foulies on. It is pretty windy. Had about 38 knots last night. Upwind, J3, well, pretty well upwind. Gonna be heinous. Cockpit shot. Trystan: Last day now; difficult to gain miles. But as the wind eases we'll be changing sails, so we'll need to do a good job with that. Entering Gothenburg. Keep it going. Spreader cam view of the cockpit. Trystan talks about sleeping as soon as he gets below. "Love sleep." Antonio: Also lots of rain, and it feels like needles when it hits your eyes. Need eye projection. It's what it is; it's the same for everybody. Bow pounding. Antonio: Should arrive today, this evening. He gets confused about what time it is; laughs. "It doesn't matter. It's daylight all the time."Jack on the helm. Jack, below: I am enjoying it. The conditions that we've got; 25 knots at about 90 true. So broad reaching. Plenty of water over the deck. Reefs in reefs out... Really nice conditions, chewing up lots of miles. But it's very wet. [chuckles] Really wet. Washing machine shots. Jack: We're still pushing really hard. Coming into the team new, I can see how much the team has improved. They're really sailing well. Tough incident at the start, losing 100 miles, but still in great spirits. Montage of crew showing high spirits in the cockpit: Mugging for the camera. Parko. Annemieke. Antonio. Trystan. Libby at the nav station: Went from being flat out on our MH0, came around the corner and it got lighter. Tricky for that reason. Crew work on the foredeck. Libby: We gained 15 miles on the leader, are 27 miles from the next boat. I expect that will close a bit more, which will be good. Slomo washing machine shot. Libby: Still a couple of peels and sail changes, and if someone makes a mistake in that they can drop a couple of miles... We'll see. Slomo washing machine. Libby: Pretty strong conditions coming up. Not that you wish for anyone to break anything. But it's a strange angle, one we haven't done much in sailing around the world. We could find a good mode. It's definitely a good opportunity. Slomo washing machine.Drone shots of them sailing past Ireland. Ben: We're just off the tip of Ireland. Fastnet rock just down to leeward of us. Drone shots of land. Ben: We've caught up another 30 knots, so we're 30 knots behind instead of 60. Drone shots. Antonio: Happy to Fastnet rock again. Obviously not in the best position, but we are recovering. I think we are in the fight. Plenty of miles to go. Let's keep positive. Drone shots with bird. Antonio: We have a headland 7 miles, then go north upwind. Pass the high pressure and then a cold front passing and we start the fast speeds. Drone shot.Sign taped to the aft side of the doghouse: "National Wine Day". Has wind forecast for each various times throughout the day. DTF 670. Libby: It is. It's National Wine Day. Libby at the nav station with Witty. Witty reads out the gains on the other boats due to the comression. Peter on the helm. Drone shots in light conditions. Foredeck. Slomo telltales. Antonio: 600 miles from the finish. Having to cross the light conditions. Libby and Witty at the nav station. Libby yawns. Flopping with the MH0. Slomo flopping. Antonio talks about the ETA. Flopping. Antonio: Still a bit far behind to talk about catching someone. If it were windy it would be harder, so it's good to have these conditions now. Peter shakes the main to try to pop the batten. Sunset.Windward-leeward after the start. Mark roundings. Grinding. Slomo grinding. Spetactor boat going through a wave. TTToP behind them in the fog. Vestas Behind them in the fog. Working in the cockpit. Crash cam footage of them folding the J1. Spreader cam of folding the J1. Parko: Full frenzy. Seventh combination, and we've been out here an hour. Witty on the helm. Spray on the bow. Triple heading. Forever Fish logo on the reefed main. Satellite dome on the stern. Antonio helming. Witty: Who's that on the bow? Libby: Vestas. Libby: Came out of there in pretty good shape. Then the fog. Peeled to the right sail, got to the FR0, and pulled up into third for a bit. But then held the FR0 for a little too long. But fleet's all within about 5 miles of each other. And can't see two boatlenghts. Front will come through tonight. Will probably see a bit further tomorrow.Parade. Dee hugs Trystan; they joke about the race of the Welshmen (Bleddyn and Trystan). Witty's goodbye kisses. Dockout. Ben talks about the fog. Trystan talks about coming from Wales, a stopover in Cardiff. Was always in his mind to do this leg. He talks about Bleddyn, and how there's a rivalry between the two. Libby: First few days is about wriggling throgh exclusion zones. All the boats in a line. Then building breeze over the next few days. Libby with her tablet in the cockpit. Witty: Really really cold, and really really cold, and really really cold. Just stay patient and stay with the fleet and grind it away. You won't see the Scallywags doing anything different this time. He grabs the wheel. Start. Antonio on the rail with the boats lined up for the start.Drone shots of Scallywag triple heading. Antonio on the helm in the sunrise. Parko tidying lines. Wake. Peter: About 75 miles south of Bermuda. A few more hours on this gybe. Last few days have been pretty hard. Now we've got the same shift as everyone else. You gotta keep believing you can get into that leading pack. Have to keep sailing as if we're leading, sailing 100%. Witty: 48 hours ago were 235 miles behind. Now 130 miles behind. As we say on Scallywag, never surrender, never give up. Alex: What time is it? Talks witih Ben about how they've been on starboard for 8 days.Grinding. Slomo washing spray with Witty on the helm. Libby below: 3 or 4 days to the finish. But a lot's going to happen. Heading toward the high pressure. Going to have to gybe. Leaders will go into lighter breeze, so we'll gain. As much of a realist I am, I think it's going to be hard to overtake anyone, but we'll get back in touch with the fleet. You can never say never. Antonio bailing. Spray on deck. Bagging garbage. Washing machine shot of the hatch from inside.Antonio: Finally, with the sunset the wind is here. Last 70 miles will be fast. A bit afraid because Dongfeng and MAPFRE are catching up very fast. They're now 6 miles behind. Stacking aft below. Crew in the moonlight. Lights on shore. Marcus: If we can keep this up, a few more hours of downwind sailing. Maybe slide past the guys in front. Got a jump on the guys behind us. Still gunning for that top spot at the moment. Witty on the helm in the moonlight. Near broach. "Ease, ease, ease! Mainsheet! Mainsheet!" Sailing fast. Fish recaps: Cloud line came through earlier; Akzo got it first and extended a little. They've managed to hold off TTToP, MAPFRE, and Dongfeng. Just trying to challenge Akzo for the win. Libby at the nav station. "It's all action here. 30 miles to the finish. It's all on in the last miles."Antonio looks through binoculars at AkzoNobel, sailing in light air a quarter-mile ahead of them. AkzoNobel a quarter-mile to leeward. Witty calls for crew to get out of the forepeak and right on the bow. At the nav station: Witty says "238 miles of this rubbish... Wait for the right opportunity. Patience..." Sailing alongsisde Akzo. Alex trimming. Witty: "Just press in the puff." Trystan: "Full on, isn't it? We'll keep changing watch; keep the fresh people going... They just got nudged ahead." Libby, looking at her tablet, calls the angle on the other tack. Tacking the MH0; AkzoNobel three-quarters of a mile ahead of them. Antonio: Tight to the end. Libby looking through binoculars: "Pretty patchy out where Dee is." Libby explains that they got too focused on Akzo, maybe, and didn't pay enough attention to TTToP. Marcus discusses whether they'll be able to stay ahead of TTToP. 100 miles to go. "Not having a meltdown just yet." Shot of TTToP on the horizon.Sunset. Stacking aft in lighter wind. Moon. Witty, at the nav station, explains the details of why Akzo will not show up on the next sched. He sounds frustrated. "How did I round up some of the dumbest human beings on the planet?" They get the sched. Dee's only 9[ miles behind us. Antonio and Ben look astern and argue over whether they're seeing a container ship or Dee. Witty: That means Akzo's somewhere between 10 and 25 miles. Antonio looks, doesn't see them. Witty uses the binoculars in the last light to look for them.Marcus, on the helm, talks about going into stealth mode. Hasn't really paid off. Libby at the nav station: Akzo's always been in better pressure, so they've been okay. Marcus: Next passing lane's the top of Auckland. Akzo is arriving an hour before them, tide against them and lighter wind. So a chance to catch them there. Antonio: All well-rested. A lot of peeling, sail changes, at the end of the leg. Alex will be full-on. Alex: We'll have Akzo on our bow and Turn the Tide on our stern. Trystan: It's gonna be carnage, I think. Witty: Seriously, I don't really care any more. I just want to get in. Horrible... Boring... leg. Wonder what they're doing on Brunel. Measuring their fingernails. Let's just get to the finish. Hopefully we can pull a rabbit out of our hat, a lizard out of the drain, a dolphin out of the sea, and get ahead of AkzoNobel. Annamieke, trimming, waves to the camera as Witty grinds the runner.AkzoNobel a mile away to weather and slightly ahead. Marcus, on the helm, talks about 6 or 7 days of light conditions and a "dingdong battle with Nicho". Good to have another boat next to them. (Interesting that he refers to it as a battle with Nicho. Do they have history, maybe?) Alex looks at AkzoNobel through binoculars. Talks about being enemies. Antonio talks about seeing them every day - hopefully seeing them every day. More shots of AkzoiNobel.Wake shot looking down, then panning up to show light conditions. Trystan on the helm. Talks about AkzoNobel behind them. "400 miles of this" (doldrums). Shot of AkzoNobel a few miles away. Pole shots (I think?) or maybe very small-movement drone shots. Annemieke talks about the stress of having a competitor so close. Witty kids her. Antonio talks about how hard it is to work in the sun. So can only be on the helm for short periods. Headaches. Not healthy. Shot of Alex going up the mast, then on deck he talks about AkzoNobel.Witty on the helm in stronger wind. Ben gives the shaka sign. Washing machine. Witty at the nav station: Very good 24 hours for the Scallywags. Have left the fleet 232 miles behind them. Witty: Just dumb luck. "Point and shoot." A little bit early days for the two red boats to think they've got it locked up. But time will tell. Washing machine. Sailing fast on starboard gybe. Libby: "There's very little you can say about the weather that's fact." Witty: "That's coming from a meteorologist." Libby talks about how this wind they're in was something they were planning for for a long time. But it then fizzled away as they were heading toward it. (But now it's here.) Washing machine. Antonio on the helm, then below: "It's great. We put all our cards on this one, and it paid off." Still a long race to go. Still the other doldrums to pass. Obviously it's good to have a 200 mile lead. But you never know. Slomo spray.High drone shot of Scallywag and AkzoNobel sailing a quarter mile apart on starboard gybe. Low-altitutde drone shot of the same. Ben talks about the leg win being a confidence boost, but now they need to back that up. Pressure to do well coming into Auckland. Marcus on the helm. John talks about wanting to win a leg, but the competition is too good to just expect to do it. "If we have the opportunity again we will do. We'll try and take it." More shots of AkzoNobel, drone shots. Witty: "Yeah, we regret it. Grid file is a little different than we thought. Grid files said that the other guys would fall into a big hole, and then once we made the decision to go up, the grid file changed... It's fugazi, fugazi... It's not real." Drone shot of AkzoNobel. Fish-eye lens view. Scary-looking clouds. Witty: "Meteorologists get very excited about this stuff. This is weather." Antonio talks about the wind change, being near Japan, needing to head for New Zealand. Libby talks about the weather: Not quite salvation, but this is the front they've been waiting for. They got caught in light winds and the others didn't. But they'll probably all converge in 7 days anyway. Witty puts on his foulies in the cockpit. We see a gybe from the cockpit with Witty on the helm. Annemieke working in the pit. Stronger wind, washing machine as they sail on port gybe.Drone shots of Scallywag sailing upwind on port tack under cloudy skies. Someone on the helm; think that must be Marcus. Antonio, below, talks about being almost in second place. Lost some gauge when clouds passed. But still in the fight. Ben at the mast during a reef. Marcus on the helm. Witty on the helm. Witty and Libby at the nav station. Witty talks about how they're doing fairly well. Libby is talking in the headset (to the cockpit, I assume) giving real-time updates on how they're doing vs. a competitor on AIS (I think). Drone shot circling them with a competitor in the distance. Drone shot overtaking Scallywag from astern with MAPFRE and Dongfeng a half mile ahead and only a few boatlenghts apart. Shot from on deck of Dongfeng and MAPFRE dueling ahead of them. Trystan, sitting on the stack forward in light, sloppy conditions, talks about the wind changes and trying to use the boats ahead of them to figure out what to do to gain in the transition. Shot of instruments as they sail in stronger wind. Shot of John Fisher grinding with Brunel to leeward of them. Circling drone shot showing MAPFRE to leeward of them.Libby, wearing a GoPro (that really is a Garmin) in the prestart: "20 to burn; 1:10 to go." Witty, on the helm on the final approach to the line: "Deploy the MH0 guys! When you're ready deploy the MH0. Go, go!" Libby: "No burn time." We see the MH0 deploy. Libby: "No burn time; we're late." Close action as they're tacking out. Witty: "Nice to wn the start in our home town." Tacking out with other boats close. Slomo grinding. New crewmember Marcus talks excitedly about the good start. Marcus, grinding: "I"m still feeling it. Didn't get much sleep on the plane, so I'll be looking forward to getting a bit of sleep tonight. I doubt it though." He laughs. Libby on the LIbby-cam: "J1 on the next tack." António smiles in slomo. Witty steers.Ben does a radio [?] voice: "...Scallywag, 5483, bound for Melbourne." Tom sits at the nav station with António behind him looking at routing software. Tom: "My life consists of 3 hours on, 3 hours off. 3 hours on. 3 hours off. I don't even know what time it is. I don't even know if it's morning or night. It all looks the same down here. [To António] What time is it?" António: "8:30... In the morning." Tom: "We've been in sunlight now for 9 hours. It's 8:30 in the morning. Go figure." Parko sits on the gally, picking through a bag of some sort of food, picking out his favorite bits and eating them. Talks to Alex, who's getting his foulies on. Parko: "Mom must be angry." Alex: "Mom, don't tell me what to do!" Parko: "But mom, I'm in the middle of the ocean." Parko: "I'm going on watch. A bit delirious. I probably should have slept, but I didn't. So I've got a lot of sugar and some coffee and I'll be good. We need to turn left. [laughs] We're going across Free-o [Freemantle?] and the Australian Bight. But there's two big ridges in the way. Once we're across them we'll be all right. But there's a big stop sign in the middle. Highway 1 is about to shut down." Alex reads the label of his protein bars. "Times two. Lunch." Parko: "I think morale's starting to pick up a bit. Everyone's dried out. Fresh pair of [something], fresh pair of socks; everyone's starting to smell a bit better too... We just don't want to have to gybe around the finish and start again. Want time for a little snooze." Alex, with talcum powder [?] on his hands, jokes with Annemieke. Alex: "Hey, Bessie. High five!" They slap hands and a cloud of powder fills the air. They laugh. Fish talks about how they're halfway, forecast is quite nice, sun's out and it's a bit drier, and everyone's happier. "And the kettle's just boiled; perfect." Ben puts food cubes in the mug in preparation for the hot-water treatment. Annemieke: "We're just enjoying what we're doing. It's not always ideal; we're all wet. But we're all happy. And we just found out that we're getting pretty late into Melbourne; the forecast has lightened down. So not that much time for preparation for Hong Kong."Scallywag crew walks through the crowd during the dockout ceremony. Slomo of Fish hugging a young man/boy (son?) across the lifelines. Someone (António?) says goodbye to a toddler (son?) behind held by a woman. The boy holds a Wisdom plushie, inadvertently bopping the woman holding him (mom?) in the nose. Parko side-hugs a girl (daughter?). Witty at the helm takes them out from the dock with crowds visible behind them. Motoring out, Witty talks about double points on this leg. "We Scallywags need a podium on this leg into Melbourne, which would be nice." Talks about the wind on this leg. Standing by the mast as they motor out, Alex talks about being a bit nervous. It's his first Southern Ocean leg. "The race doesn't start here. It starts tonight." Parko, in the pit: "This is an important two miles out of 6,000. So it's just about sailing smart." We see the start, with all the other boats to leeward of them. Close action. Ben, on the bow, moving a sail.António is on the weather rail holding binoculars. António: "Yesterday I had just finished diving the boat - Scallywag - and all of a sudden Simeon ran up to me and asked me if I wanted to do the leg. Of course, that was my goal. I spoke to Witty, and he was happy with it as well. So it was good. Very good opportunity." Nicolai on the helm. António: "When you are a reserve sailor, you need to be always ready to jump on board whenever it's needed. So: that's how I am here."