It was a clash of colours between Volvo 60s last night as djuice dragons, in their unmistakeable hot pink, took on SEB in their startling lime green in a 500nm race from Gothenburg to Stockholm. The race started in mild conditions of 4-5 knots with little promise of stronger winds. Beating up wind to the start, the boats split tacked over the line with SEB going onto a starboard tack on the left of the channel and djuice onto port. SEB was approximately 1 boatlength ahead on the gun.

A tight matchracing duel followed with SEB ahead of djuice dragons on the first three crosses. By the fourth cross, djuice had snuck ahead, – the right side of the channel had proven favourable for tactician Ed Baird whose matchracing skills came to the fore.

Matchracing a heavyweight VO60 is nothing like tacking a phantom-weight IACC however the principles of the match are the same and Ed obviously knows his game – djuice remained ahead until the boats were out of sight.

However, the Volvo Ocean Race is not a short course race and the best is yet to come. Reports from the boat will continue over the next 3 days as the Scandinavian teams fight it out all the way to Stockholm where they will compete in the Round Gotland Race.

“I am in favour of racing other teams as much as I can before the Volvo starts,” says skipper Knut Frostad. “It gives us a good yardstick to measure ourselves against because when you train on your own you never really know how good you are.”

For the journey back from Stockholm, djuice dragons will race SEB again although Jean-Yves Bernot and Ed Baird will step off. The Round Gotland Race starts on July 1 and finishes on July 2 and will include other VO60s in the fleet.