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10.02.2002
2.Wochenbericht
Southampton, England, February 10, 2002 Week 2
Near disasters in the Southern Ocean
Iceberg dodging was the key to week two of the Volvo Ocean Race. All of
the boats reported close encounters with either icebergs or growlers, and
djuice even found themselves in a field of growlers. During the hours of
darkness, News Corp hit an iceberg doing around 21 knots, SEB lost her
mast and ASSA ABLOY managed to save her rig, thanks to a safety strop
following a failure in part of her runner system. To really finish the
week off for the crews, they sailed through blizzards, hailstorms and even
fog. Currently the leaders are just around Cape Horn, with illbruck
first round at 0838 GMT on February 10. The second stage is now ahead of
the fleet, the long haul up the east coast of South America into the
finish in Rio de Janeiro. One thing is for certain, the sailors will be
happy to head north and warm up.
Waffler [Stu Bettany] used the opportunity to pelt his crew on illbruck
with snowballs, “Waffler started running around doing all his preparations
for the change [sail], as the wind was getting lighter quickly and a
serious amount of snow was coming down. Because the wind dropped 10 knots
and the decks were keeping dry, the snow stayed on deck and for Waffler,
this turned him into a 5 year old who was playing with the snow and
throwing snowballs at everybody,” wrote Dirk de Ridder. Neal McDonald
from ASSA ABLOY said earlier, “It’s pretty cold. It’s not unpleasant,
but it’s not somewhere you would go on holiday, that’s for sure.”
Neal had also been watching the relative boat speeds, “Up to now I thought
the boats were very equal {on speed], but it would appear from what I’m
seeing that illbruck has got an edge in some of these reaching conditions.
I think they [the other boats] are reasonably equal. It’s more a
question of where you are and what wind situation you are in.” Amer
Sports One also made the same observation over illbruck’s boatspeed later
in the week.
Jez Fanstone from News Corp summed up the leg to Cape Horn, “Cape Horn is
2300 miles away with some heavy air forecast for the next few days and the
racing as tight as ever. Get ready for a wet ride.”
Not long after, News Corp was to hit an iceberg doing around 21 knots and
unfortunately they sustained some damage to their rig. It took them a
few hours, to get the boat sailing again at full strength and this left
them over 100 nautical miles to the north of the fleet. Ross Field
reported just after the accident, “I am bloody worried. This is
dangerous... there are icebergs everywhere. There are growlers floating
nowhere near the bergs. We hit a small berg whilst doing 21 knots. I was
steering and all I felt was a loud crash on the hull and then the rudder.
The guys below then rushed into the bow and checked the interior but we
appeared to be ok.” Along with the rest of the fleet, they had been
passing through ice for the last 48 hours, and concerns had been rising
with each ice sighting that was made and plotted by each of the
navigators. Field continued, “At one stage, thank God during daylight,
we were charging through hunks of ice. I had a man on look out and
directing me through the ice - we brushed when we passed some small bits.
Its night time… We have had a shocking day, broken sails, battens,
halyards. The boat’s a shambles, sails everywhere downstairs and the guys
are sleeping in their survival suits. We are sleeping with our feet
forward - if we hit something you don't damage yourself too much.”
He then summed up, “A normal life looks very attractive at the moment.
There will be amazing stories when we all get into to Rio. This is sport
in the extreme.”
Kevin Shoebridge reported crew injuries on Tyco, when the boat took off
down a wave, “While hoisting the jib the boat took off down a wave at 25
knots. A solid wall of water washed over the deck as the bow dug in. The
jib and three of the crew ended back beyond the shrouds tangled with each
other and the lifelines. Nipper [Guy Salter] took a knock to the head and
has received stitches above the eye, nice fix up job by Jan [Dekker]. Brad
Jackson has a badly bruised nose, hopefully not broken.” Large wind
squalls and ice were his major concerns, “I now sit in the nav station
looking for ice ahead and black squalls behind. We are constantly hitting
speeds of over 27 knots and it feels like we are on a runaway train.”
With injuries and accidents, also came exhilaration at some of the most
exciting conditions most of the sailors had ever experienced. Paul Cayard
wrote of the excitement, the exhilaration of surfing downwind at high
speeds, and the slightly surreal reality below decks, “As we surf down the
waves we plough into the one in front and two feet of water comes down the
deck at 25 knots. Everything is tethered forward so it can't be swept
into the [steering] wheels and break them. Inside it feels like we are
hitting something constantly but it is just the bow hitting water at high
speed.”
“Roger [Nilson] is sitting next to me, writing a report to the race office
to advise the other competitors. He’s laughing at me writing this to you
saying I am like Hemmingway who wrote while he was at war with bullets
flying around his head. He says Hemmingway had a cigar and whiskey. I am
a bit short on that stuff right now but I will make up for that when I get
home.”
As far as the reported iceberg sightings from HQ are concerned, there were
numerous sightings from all the yachts over the week. Every sighting,
once reported and recorded is then immediately sent out from the Volvo
Race headquarters to the entire fleet. This amount of ice has never been
seen before on a round the world race and this pattern is extremely
unusual.
Ross Field wrote from News Corp on February 2, “Never seen so many
icebergs and growlers in all my sailing in the Southern Ocean. Spotted our
first one and then all of a sudden sighted many others with growlers
everywhere. We were sailing through, surfing at 23 knots, small bits of
ice and at one stage we passed within 20 feet of growler. Global
warming???? I say yes, there is ice breaking off the ice cap all the
time. I have never seen ice on this leg of the race before.”
Stress levels were high this week, with high winds and large seas
providing exciting sailing conditions. Add to that icebergs, growlers,
snow and even fog and the stress level on a normal adult would go through
the roof. All of this, and more, has just been another day in the office
for the Volvo crews.
Team SEB were so interested in the effects of stress on the human body
that they have been carrying out ongoing research with their crew while
they are sailing around the world. The stress-research project was
initiated by Hans Bäck, an orthopaedic surgeon and Team SEB's crew doctor
when the boat is in port, in association with Lars-Gunnar Gunnarsson, who
is a Reader in Vocational Medicine at the Stressforum Clinic of Vocational
& Environmental Medicine, at Sweden's Örebro University Hospital.
The project has been launched to determine whether the human body is
capable of mobilising stress hormones and energy with the same vigour
throughout the entire nine months of the Volvo Ocean Race, or whether
these resources become depleted by fatigue. The project also aims to
determine the extent to which activation of such stress hormones affects
the individual's own perceptions of his health, strength and general
feeling of vitality. The aim of the study is to contribute useful data
about whether - and if so how - extended and considerable stress can
affect an individual's health, and will help identify symptoms of imminent
physical breakdown as a consequence of exhaustion, or some other
stress-related impact on health.
Gurra Krantz the skipper of SEB, likened the game in the Southern Ocean to
Russian roulette, “I do not know what other people think but passing
growlers at night at boat speed of 20 -25 knots, within a couple of feet
makes me nervous. Three times we have passed a growler, the size of a car,
so close that the white water around it actually touches the hull! Russian
roulette is probably safer than this. We had 21 large icebergs on radar
one night!”
Paul Cayard and the rest of the crew on Amer Sports One must have reached
the highest levels of stress possible when just after a severe broach,
they were faced with two massive icebergs. Paul Cayard reported, “30
minutes into that last driver, onto our side we went. The gyration was so
violent, that downstairs where I was sitting recovering, the engine
box-cover, which doubles as the companionway stairs, simply left its mount
and landed on me. We got up on deck and found the kite was shredded. No
sooner had we gotten the kite down and Roger [Nilson] yells up, two
icebergs ahead, four miles. It was a blessing to have the kite down but
the width of the two bergs forced us to sail between them. This is not
recommended in any book. Needless to say we had a few tense moments there
but we got through it unscathed. We polled out a blast reacher and just
chilled out for a few hours and took the 20-mile hit on the sked.”
Undoubtedly, giving their research project some further stress/fatigue
data, unfortunately SEB was to lose her mast 1200 miles from land, and
deep into the remotest ocean on the planet. The crew onboard SEB were
numbed but resolute. Hopes and dreams were washed over the side with the
reindexs of the rig as it was cut free to prevent it from punching a hole
in the hull of the boat.
Scott Beavis recounted the event a couple of days later, “When we took
over, things didn't seem that bad, 28, gusting 32 [knots], fresh to
frightening, just the way we like it. The first squall hit us with winds
peaking at around 36 knots and we were off. Boatspeed around 30 [knots]
with not too much control. In the back of our minds, we saw growlers,
silently waiting for the green icebreaker. We managed to ride it out with
not too much stress. Tom noted a black cloud looming. The next squall
hit us like a freight train. 32, 33, 34, 35, 36 [knots] and still rising,
38, 39, 40. Tom unclipped his harness and moved towards the martin
breaker in the cockpit (martin breaker is a device rigged to the tack of
the spinnaker to release it when ‘it’ hits the fan, as it was), 41,
42................we started to roll, index on [sheet in], gennaker on
[sheet in], where was Tom, he was not on the grinder. I jumped across and
started grinding the chute [in].”
“We started rolling back to windward: I moved across and started grinding
the index [in]. The third [roll] to leeward was a biggy. Tom was back on
the grinder.. just. I was still grinding the index, as the boat rolled to
windward. This time it didn't feel so good. Tony yelled, “Guys, it’s
gone...” describing his control over the boat in a relatively calm manner.
The last numbers he remembers seeing were boat speed 28 [knots], twa
[true wind angle] 147 [degrees], and windspeed 42 [knots].”
“We rolled to windward and the cockpit filled with water. I was the only
one of us clipped on at the time and managed to grab a rail in the
cockpit. Tom wrapped himself around the leeward, now upper, grinding
pedestal and was also underwater. Woos, who was next to the wheel,
grabbed the primary winch shaft. Tony held on to the centre of the wheel.
Woos remembered struggling for breath; that's how far under we were.
With our hatch layout (two, a leeward, which was closed and a windward
one, which was now 1m underwater) all the guys in the bunk were woken (if
not already) with a tonne or so of 3 degrees [temperature] water flooding
the cabin.”
“Bang! It was the unmistakable sound of carbon blowing up. We rolled
upright; the mast had twisted off about 2m above the boom from the force
of the first [bottom] spreader hitting the water at 28 knots. We were
lucky it broke otherwise we would have filled the boat with water and
sunk.”
“{I thought} “Where is every one? I knew they weren't clipped on
[attached to the boat by a harness]. Sweet, everyone is here.”
“The deck light was switched on and it illuminated the carnage. A sorry
looking stump, a broken boom, most of the windward stack in the water and
the bottom end of the mast hanging over the side. Work began on cutting
the thing loose. We had it free within an hour a half and were sailing
(sort of within four).”
“As daylight broke, work began again on getting the jury rig sorted.
After about 3 hours, we were sailing at around 5 knots towards Cape Horn.”
SEB is now making her way towards South America under a ‘schooner’ jury
rig, made up of the stump of the mast, and the reindexs of the broken boom
and spinnaker pole. Team SEB’s shore crew worked around the clock to
make sure that the 28 metre long mast would get to the stricken vessel as
soon as possible.
The shore team’s preparations included extremely detailed travel plans for
the new mast to get from Gothenburg in Sweden to meet the boat ‘somewhere’
in South America. First, it had to travel to the nearest major port in
Sweden on a specially lengthened truck, where it was loaded onto a ship
bound for Zeebrugge in Belgium. From the container port its onward
travel was by truck to Schipol Airport in Amsterdam. That was the easy
bit. From that point the dilemma for speed of travel was whether it
would be quicker to get the mast to the boat or the boat to the mast.
The first option to get the mast to the boat, would involve a 747 flight
for the mast to Buenos Aires in Argentina. From there, the only option
is another aeroplane, as trucking in that region of South America is not
possible due to the mountainous terrain and the poor quality of the roads.
This would be the preferred route forward for the sailing and shore
teams, but it could prove difficult to find a large enough plane to
freight the rig, which is still able to land on limited runway space.
The second option would be to get the boat to the mast, and would involve
flying the mast into Rio, the finish port for this leg of the Volvo Ocean
Race. A cargo ship would then be diverted to Ushauaia to pick up the SEB
and she would then arrive into Rio on a ship after a trip of approximately
a week.
Gurra Krantz, skipper of SEB wrote in the aftermath of losing the mast,
“Tears were not far away, when the whole thing 'was over', and we had a
little time to reflect. It certainly is a sad day for the project and all
individuals working so hard to do their best. The race for a top spot is
over. We now have to concentrate on getting good results in on the legs
and see how far it takes us. What has put us in this situation? Was it
gear failure? No. Just too much wind at one stage in combination with
really bad waves.”
The crew still indextained their sense of humour and Gurra summarised that
he felt that they were breaking every rule by sailing a double masted
V.O.60, “We have now constructed a better jury rig and speed through the
water is eight knots. We are actually running a schooner now and probably
breaking every V.O.60 rule there is.”
On day 15 into the race, illbruck, having sailed a near perfect leg has
romped away from the majority of the fleet, rounding at 0838 GMT. Amer
Sports One was not far behind at 1348 GMT, followed by Tyco less than
three minutes later. News Corp in fourth position led ASSA ABLOY, who
rounded at 1526 GMT by 12 minutes. The next major decision for the boats
is inside or outside the Falkland Islands.
Volvo Ocean Race Position Report, Day 15, 1554 GMT
PS Yacht Latitude Longitude DTF CMG SMG TFHR DTL DTL-C ETA PO
1 ILBK 55 00.20S 065 22.80W 02166 043 12.3 350 0 +0 18 FEB 02 29
2 AONE 55 49.00S 066 38.64W 02231 076 12.1 329 65 +3 18 FEB 02 25
3 TYCO 55 54.48S 066 38.92W 02236 053 13.8 359 70 -7 18 FEB 02 18
4 NEWS 55 56.68S 067 04.36W 02247 081 12.4 327 81 +1 18 FEB 02 21
5 AART 56 00.24S 067 06.56W 02250 066 14.2 360 84 -9 18 FEB 02 19
6 DJCE 56 06.24S 068 18.44W 02288 079 14.9 355 122 -15 18 FEB 02 13
7 ATOO 56 28.80S 081 43.88W 02735 088 16.8 346 569 -26 20 FEB 02 7
8 TSEB 56 02.64S 091 39.24W 03066 073 06.9 174 900 +36 28 FEB 02 12
PS – Position; DTF – Distance to Finish; CMG – Course made good; SMG –
Speed made good; TFHR – 24 hours run; DTL – Distance to leader; DTL-C –
Distance to leader change; ETA – Estimated time of arrival; PO –
accumulated Points
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