18 May 2006—Portsmouth,UK
From: MOVISTAR QFB LEG SEVEN DAY 8
Sent: 18 May 2006 16:15
After the terrible news from his morning, I didn't feel writing a long
daily, but now I realise I need to write a few words what we have gone
through in the last 16 hours, and as well to comfort the families back
home that all is well on movistar.
Needless to say the spirits were very high yesterday afternoon and
evening. Movistar was hauling the mail and averaging close to 24 knots.
and closing in quickly on Brunel and the others. Decided to put in two
reefs at dusk, as the breeze kept increasing, to 25 -30 knots, with puffs
up to 35 knots. Our conditions!! But even with two reefs we didn't slow
down, as we could sail a tad higher angles. It makes a big difference once
the center of effort gets lowered, so much better the control is.
Then we heard the man overboard news, Capey and I looked to each other,
this was serious. All boats were asked by race headquarters to alter
course towards the location. Capey quickly put in the way point, and we
realised we had to gybe. The position was roughly 4 hours away. I called
everybody on deck, it would be impossible to gybe the spinnaker in these
conditions, so decided to drop it, and as well we had to sink the entire
stack,which was on deck, to down below. The spinnaker was down in seconds
and then we started working on the stack. As soon this was done, we gybed.
It is not matter of minutes that you can re-hoist the spinnaker, this had
to get re-packed, so a couple of the guys started on that, while the rest
hoisted a reaching jib, so that at least we could keep sailing fast
towards the waypoint.
Soon after we heard that ABN2 had recovered the man overboard, we were
relieved and amazed in the mean time, some fantastic seamanship.
Since we were on a wrong heading it meant we had to gybe again. It would
be a reverse order of what did before. Drop the jib etc, etc. Finally we
gybed the boat, but when I looked up, I nearly got a heart attack, the
mainsail had split horizontal completely over, about 5 meters under the
top. This had turned really bad for us, now we had a ripped mainsail,
where the top was still on the lock. The tripping mechanism was jammed, so
had to send Mikey up in the rig, to trip the lock and painstaking slow we
could lower the sail bit by bit on the deck. This was a mayor, we new
immediately that we probably only could repair this downstairs meaning
losing ground against the other boats.
Then Capey came on deck and told us the horrible news.
No words necessary, everybody felt miserable, but we had situation on our
hand we had to solve, so that distracted us away from the bad news.
Once the main was secured on the deck we hoisted the trysail, one issue
was that the main halyard had hooked behind the jumpers, so had to clear
that first. Not easy, in the howling wind and driving rain.
Decided to hoist the reacher as the wind had increased more, but lost
control of the sail when hoisting it, and dropped it in the water, but got
control over it, but there was some damage. The classic snowball effect
had come fully in place for movistar. Just with a try-sail and staysail we
were only doing 8 knots, so up with the spinnaker again. So at least we
are moving again. Way to slow, but a least in the right direction. Finally
got the mainsail of the mast & boom, and taken all the battens out, so we
could get it downstairs, were the repair has started. All the boys did a
hell of a job. But the onboard sail makers are not confident how the
repair will go. A horizontal split is the worse what can happen; on thing
for sure it will be a huge job to repair. Keep you posted.
Bouwe Bekking - Skipper
For media information on the Volvo Ocean Race, please contact:
Lizzie Green Press Officer at race headquarters:
Tel: +44 1489 554 832, Mob: +44 7801 185 320
Email: lizzie.green@volvooceanrace.org
Sophie Luther Press Assistant at race headquarters
Mob: +44 7956 285548 email: sophie.luther@volvooceanrace.org
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