Thin boys from Bermuda

Finishing fourth is a reality check for Kevin Shoebridge's Team Tyco reports Ed Gorman

Fourth into Cape Town is a tricky one. Four years ago Lawrie Smith brought Silk Cut into the Tavern of the Seas in fourth and looked a little uncomfortable about it. "You can win this race with fourths," he said at his post arrival press conference. But for Silk Cut fourth was to prove one place better than its overall ranking by the end of the race eight months later.

This weekend Kevin Shoebridge said very similar things. You sensed that he would so much rather have been in the top-three. Without being a bad result, fourth is the next best thing to it. "There's nothing wrong with fourth," he said. "As far as we are concerned a top-three result is fantastic. You know fourth's fine basically and I think we've said before the start - if we could stay in the top-four for the whole race and get a couple of wins, you probably win the event."

"We are a little bit disappointed because we're not in the top-three," he added, "because we felt like we probably could have been but, at the same time, it's one-ninth of the points and we've come out of it thinking more than ever that we've got the team, got the people on board and we've got the boat that has the ability to get us in the top-three."

He made a good case for his optimism. The basic thesis is that Tyco was on the pace, going well and was capable of winning the leg until the dreaded Trindade effect scuppered her chances. Faced with a navigator's nightmare and no clear way to go, they did the sensible thing and were just not as fortunate as some others, especially Grant Dalton's Amer Sports One which came up from behind when there was very little wind, rolled them to weather and put 24 miles on them in one sched.

Steve Hayles, the Tyco navigator who was also on Silk Cut, said Trindade had been "a little bit of a weird situation." He said in times like those you tend to go the way conditions on the water dictated. What had pleased him, however, was how quickly and aggressively they had switched from their easterly heading to a southerly one when they saw the bottom falling out of the east. This, he believed, had certainly saved them from Assa Abloy's fate and a leg finish one place even worse.

Hayles believes no-one had the answers during those feverish days off Brazil, implying we should not read too much into a leg ranking so heavily influenced by it either. "I genuinely don't think anybody understood what the situation was and what the outcome was going to be and I'm sure that the guys for whom it did go well would have been surprised at how successful it was for them," he said.