Team ABN Roar in the Forties
Strong upwind conditions over the last 24 hours have taken their toll on the Volvo Ocean Race fleet. In the early hours of this morning Neal McDonald’s Ericsson Racing Team was forced to turn back to Cape Town when she broke the end fitting on one of the giant hydraulic rams used to cant the keel. This was followed a few hours later by the news that an area of the deck on Brasil 1 was delaminating (where the carbon layers either side of the core ’spacer’ material had come unbonded) and they were heading back to land too, once again leaving the race with five out of seven still competing. Fortunately conditions are now getting lighter and the excitement, for the time being, is over.
ABN AMRO TWO navigator Simon Fisher gave some insight into the
conditions last night, the cause of the trouble: “Yesterday afternoon
and evening were absolutely heinous, in terms of pounding upwind. It
took its toll on the boat and the crew. Most people bounced their
dinner!” While the wind strength of 25-26 knots was not exceptional the sea state was short and sharp. “It had us launching off every other wave and coming down with an almighty bang. So we throttled back a bit and pulled up some daggerboard because we didn’t want to smash the boat up.
It might have cost us a couple of miles on the water but we thought in terms of longevity it was a good idea. We were pretty sensible with it all.”
The news of their competitor’s breakage prompted Nick Bice to make a
thorough check of the boat. “It all seems to be in good order so we are pretty pleased with that,” said Fisher.
On ABN AMRO ONE they have not been so lucky. Mike Sanderson explains:
“Getting out of Cape Town we ripped a couple of jibs - just little tears in that first squall, but we have those all fixed and back up to 100 percent. Then beating up the coast we hit some pretty bad kelp which we didn’t notice until we were well into it. We couldn’t work it out: We had awesome speed in the in-port when we’d lined up with everyone, and yet we were just okay.” They managed to remove the kelp (a substantial piece of seaweed) and yesterday proceeded to overhaul both Ericsson and the Pirates through a sheer boat speed advantage.
Last night a more serious problem occurred when the structure in the bow used to hold down the tack (front bottom corner) of the Solent jib (the sail on the inner forestay, one back from the bow) broke. “At that stage I thought the Solent tack fitting was going to be out for the whole leg,” continued Sanderson. This prospect would have considerably impaired their performance. “But Dave Endean and Jan Dekker have done an awesome job and put it back together today and it is going to be stronger than it ever was. So we are going to come out of this unscathed.” At present until the repair is fully complete there is still an open hole in the deck which is forcing them to bail out roughly six buckets of freezing sea water every 30 minutes.
This afternoon winds are getting lighter as they approach the centre of the ridge of high pressure that lies in front of them. This is
orientated along a line from the west northwest to east southeast and as a result ABN AMRO TWO, being furthest boat to the west, should be the first boat through and into the westerlies to the south of it.
“Everything seems to be happening a bit earlier than we thought,” says Simon Fisher. “The most recent weather has got us crossing [the ridge] this afternoon and by tonight we should be in some good weather. It has been good to be out to the west and it should give us the opportunity to get a bit of [wind] pressure first. Whether we are far enough west to make a substantial difference I’m not sure. The black boat did very well on us in the last sched because we ran out of breeze in a cloud and had to put a tack in and that got them a bit further south. We shall see.”
While ABN AMRO TWO is furthest west, they are virtually neck and neck
with ABN AMRO ONE for the lead of the race south, despite the official leaderboard still having Bouwe Bekking’s movistar holding first place, due to her being closest to Melbourne and the finish line.
Once through the ridge the wind will slowly veer around to the west and build in strength until they are fully into the Southern Ocean
experiencing the strong downwind conditions and high speed sailing the crew signed on to this race to experience.
| This entry was posted on Wednesday, January 4th, 2006 at 4:30 pm and is filed under Main Stories. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed. |
