"It's clear that India has taken in this race with open arms and the race has taken India in with open arms."

Saturday 13 December 2008, 07:15 GMT

The gates opened and they came in the thousands. Some two hours later the queues to get into the race village are still snaking for hundreds of metres down the road.

When the time came for the sailors to be paraded through the crowds and down to the pontoons, it made for one of the most spectacular departure ceremonies this event has ever seen.

The Indian people, while unfamiliar with this race and its history, have shown incredible enthusiasm on this first visit to Asia. They pressed deep into the passage walked by the sailors and, with arms waving and voices coarse, mobbed the crews and took pictures as they walked one-by-one to their boats.

What should have been a quick 200-metre walk took most crews seven or eight minutes. No one seemed to mind. In fact, quite the opposite. "Unbelievable," Bouwe Bekking said to Jonathan Swain as Telefonica Blue escaped the gauntlet.

The welcome was not just reserved for the front-runners. Each sailor, be it Team Russia's Wouter Verbraak, who only arrived in the country in the last 36 hours because of visa issues, or runaway leader Torben Grael, the reception was incredible.

It has been a feature of this stopover, recently compared by Delta Lloyd navigator Matt Gregory to a cherry picking festival in Traverse City, Michigan. There, people with no interest in cherries see the event as a must-attend feature and arrive in their droves just to be part of it. From whatever angle you view this stopover - commercial, altruistic or just spreading the popularity of the event - it has been a great success courtesy of the interest and friendliness of the people that have numbered upwards of 50,000 every day.

Today, there are substantially more. Among them as chief guest was Ambika Soni, the union cabinet minister in charge of the Ministry of Tourism and Culture. She repeated that the country would not let itself be marred by terrorism, while also pledging to do everything possible to get an Indian sailor on a boat in the next race. The crowd loved it.

They also loved the presence of Dino Morea, the Bollywood superstar who paraded with PUMA.

All the while, the sailors stood next to their boats looking at barely active wind instruments. Even with the draft caused by paragliders and helicopters, the air is barely dancing at five knots. For them, as racers, it will mean a slow start. For the incalculable thousands in the village and around the coast, you sense they would not mind one bit if the fleet stayed in town a few hours longer.

04:45 GMT update

What lies ahead? It's not just a question being asked by the army of sailing and shore crews trying to decipher the mysteries of the next step into the unknown. Those who run the race village and its security also wish they had a crystal ball handy.

The crowd estimates seem to vary. Some say the village will rock under the weight of 200,000 people, others are more conservative with a forecast in the region of 100,000. And then there are the predictions for the neighbouring headlands. "I expect there will be hundreds of thousands all over the coasts," said N Ramachandran, the chairman of the Cochin Port Trust. "A lot of interest and enthusiasm for this race."

At the moment, security seems braced for the higher. Guards are being briefed and plans repeated. "It will be a lot of people," one said. "Very many."

The docks, however, are a picture of tranquillity. From one side to the other and past all eight yachts, no more than 15 members of the assorted shore crews could be seen. Below them the water is glassy, almost completely calm. "There can't be more than five knots (of breeze)," said Tim Dean, the Team Russia shore boss. A quick reading from one of the boat's dials reveals it is actually 5.5 knots from 80 degrees east. "Pretty close," he said.

So will be the racing. No one at yesterday's press conference would publicly name a favourite. Mark Covell, the media crewmember for Team Russia who is not sailing this leg, believes an upset could be on the cards. "It's so light, maybe Delta Lloyd could get it," he said. "They're pretty good in the light these days."

Meanwhile, Nick Nicholson, the measurer, is striding down the pontoon. He knows each of the weight and shape specifics these teams try desperately to hide from one another, but he can't call this one. "Anything could happen," he said. "You could be miles ahead and sail into a net in the Strait (of Malacca) and stop for five hours."

He also revealed which of the boats have re-measured since the race began. "PUMA have had two new certificates, Ericsson 3 have had one when they replaced the keel in Cape Town," he said.

All the while, the PA system is blasting out sound-checks. Something big could be about to happen.

04:30 Update

The Race Village is relatively quiet still, at 09:30 local time. It hasn't been open to the public yet so the teams are enjoying a last few minutes of relative calm to complete there preparations.

A big send-off is planned from Cochin. The fleet is scheduled to dock out at 12:05 (local) and then proceed into a Parade of Sail around the channels that surround Cochin. This will be followed by a Ceremonial Start at 14:00, right in front of the Race Village, before the actual leg start takes place offshore at 15:30.

There was a nice quote from Ken Read at the skippers' press conference yesterday which I think sums up the feeling of many of the sailors and shore crews who have spend that past two or three weeks here.

In response to a question about the new route for the Volvo Ocean Race, which takes in stopovers in Asia (Cochin, Singapore, and Qingdao) for the first time, the PUMA skipper said:

"It's clear that India has taken in this race with open arms and the race has taken India in with open arms. It's been a wonderful experience here. I think we were all looking forward to it on the one hand but felt slight trepidation on the other hand because we're venturing into the unknown. But so far, it's proved to all involved that this could be one of the best decisions ever made in boat racing to bring the race to this part of the world."