SAILING:THE SEVEN-BOAT fleet of the Volvo Ocean Race begins its first offshore stage of the new year this Sunday with almost unified opinion among the crews that the next 12 days are likely to be the toughest of the entire 39,000-mile course, even exceeding the conditions of the Southern Ocean.

However, as the teams depart Singapore for Qingdao in China, there is far from unified opinion regarding a conundrum worthy of the great Confucius that has rumbled beneath the surface of the event for the past two weeks.

At the heart of the issue lies the dominant overall race leader Ericsson 4, skippered by five-time Olympic medallist Torben Grael, and a delicate but hugely significant rules issue. At stake is a potentially devastating penalty that could have overturned the running order of the race with unknown repercussions.

The issue originated last June when race officials travelled to the Ericsson team’s training camp in the Canaries, where they took detailed hull measurements of Grael’s boat to satisfy the Volvo Open 70 (VO70) Rule that governs the design and construction of the fastest ocean monohulls.

With a lead-in time that started even before the last race ended, plus deep pockets, the Ericsson two-boat campaign has been a model of how to win this race – until last week.

With the June rule measurement complete, the team continued training, but later damaged the bow of the boat. That was then repaired by constructing a new part to replace the damaged area.

Significantly, a self-tapping screw inserted by the measurers as a reference point during the June inspection was duplicated in the new section by the shore-team boat-builder.

The original damaged section was then placed in a team container to travel to the race ports as a spare. The official VO70 certificate was duly issued, but the race measurers weren’t informed of the change, though there is no suggestion this was anything other than a genuine error.

Fast-forward to January 2009 in Singapore, where every boat was scheduled to be re-measured as a compliance check. A sharp-eyed official spotted the original, damaged bow section in the Ericsson compound, complete with the original screw in place, and began asking questions: only official measurers are permitted to insert such reference points, so the presence of two screws, one in the spare but also one on the boat, started the alarm bells ringing. The team fully co-operated with the re-measurement that then established that Ericsson 4 was, in fact, two millimetres longer than the original inspection.

A protest by the Rule Management Group (RMG) against the team was submitted to the International Jury, and included statements that: “As a result of removal of the original bow section and its replacement with a new component, original hull measurements have been invalidated,” and that “Ericsson 4 has not to this date held any valid Volvo Open 70 certificate”.

But by the time the RMG protest reached the jury hearing, the measurers opted simply to request a ruling as to whether the team were obliged by the rules to inform the RMG of the change made to the boat after measurement.

Following the hearing, which included an emotional statement from Grael, the jury found that there was no specific requirement in the rules for the team to notify the RMG of changes made – an omission rectified yesterday by an amendment to the VO70 rule – and the protest was dismissed.

Yesterday, chief measurer James Dadd confirmed that pursuit of Ericsson 4 for competing without a valid measurement certificate had not been their intention; that would be a matter for any other party, such as a competitor or race committee.

The other teams have been dumbstruck – but have so far accepted the jury’s limited ruling. On one hand, here was the clear race leader in an alleged breach of the rules of the event, while, on the other, nobody has argued that the two-millimetre error gave any competitive advantage to the team, so where’s the harm?

In private, many of Ericsson 4’s rival competitors admit they would jump at a chance of dislodging the race leader from first place, especially when handed such an opportunity on a plate by the dream-team. But all are too well aware of the floodgates that would be opened, releasing, at very least, charges that protesting teams were trying to gain an advantage from an accidental, off-the-water situation.

An uneasy truce has prevailed ahead of Sunday’s departure that will mark a return to competition to be decided in miles rather than millimetres. With two-thirds of the race points still up for grabs, many also suggest that the race is only beginning.