First-leg victory would be welcome bonus

With just 450 miles remaining in the first leg of the Volvo Ocean Race, Grant Dalton, the skipper of Amer Sports One, is ready for a fight to the finish

Things are fast and furious at the moment. With 450 miles to go we are in a titanic struggle with John Kostecki and the boys in illbruck to be first into Cape Town.

Right now we are surging at about 20 knots, though the average has tended to be about 16 knots. There are some funny patches in the weather and in the last six hours we found that a couple of clouds had less wind under them, slowing us down.

As things stand, we may have lost five of our current 17-mile lead over illbruck and, as always, we will be a little apprehensive when the next six-hourly position report comes through. On the other hand, they could be having just the same experiences as us.

Last week we sensed that having rounded Ihla de Trinidade off the coast of South America, we had picked up a very favourable breeze. Since then everything has gone very nicely, so it is now just a question of whether we can we hold on. We know that illbruck are a class act and we are also fully aware that they have built up a sail inventory that can give them enough extra speed to enable them to come charging back at us.

Our inventory is one of the things we have to work on. After all, illbruck have been sailing for three years, we are rookies who have only three months under our belts.

But should we be able to hold them off? If they do gun us down it will be because of finding better wind, not having any inherent speed advantage in the two boats. We can also console ourselves with the fact that win lose or draw, you could not have a happier team than we have on Amer Sports One. It has been a job well done. By tomorrow morning we should know.

Looking beyond our arrival at Cape Town, we now feel that we have established ourselves as serious challengers in this round-the-world race. We are not here to make up the numbers and, while illbruck must have expected to win this first leg, we didn't – so everything is a bonus for us.

As for the others, some of those guys will be hurting bad. I know that because I have been there in the past. They will also be under more time pressure to turn things round and be ready for the next leg. The boys have had no time off at all on this campaign and that is one of the reasons we have a strong shore crew waiting to fix all the jobs. I want the sailing crew to have six clear days to rest up and recuperate, but, knowing what they are like, they will mainly stay pretty close. Time off, as far as they are concerned, is a privilege, not a right.

Our main problem, as far as gear is concerned, is with the mast and, in particular, the masthead halyard locks, both of which have failed. We have had an engineer working on the problem in the United States and he should be in Cape Town this weekend with some new, modified locks. Work will also be done on our sail inventory, trying to make sure we do not have any gaps, while we lost a whole sail a couple of days ago, partly because of a slip in concentration on deck.

These boats can be a real handful and that will be all the more so on the next leg as we go down into the gales and big seas of the Southern Ocean on the way to Sydney.

For me there will be no rest in Cape Town as I shall be on the first available plane back home to Auckland in New Zealand. My wife Nicki gave birth to our third child on Tuesday, a lot earlier than expected. However both she and our new 3lb 10oz daughter are doing well. This has been a big week all round.