22.05.2006
Glenn Bourke on Volvo incidents and movistar
'Glenn Bourke, CEO Volvo Ocean Race. ©Martin Stockbridge' Volvo Ocean Race
Once the immediate safety of the movistar crew had been assured, Amanda Blackley talked to Volvo Ocean Race CEO, Glenn Bourke, about the situation as it transpired, the future of movistar the boat and the ramifications for the Volvo Ocean Race,
'I think it’s been an incredibly difficult period for all of those boats: Brunel and in fact everybody in the fleet has had a really tough time on this Atlantic crossing. The weather has been absolutely atrocious.
'But what I can say is that ABN AMRO TWO in every single case has acted incredibly professionally. They’ve done exactly the right thing at the right time and Bouwe Bekking in similar cases, made good decisions. I’ve been speaking to him now for over 24 hours, probably even longer than that, and he’s reindexed rational the whole way through, he’s come up with good ideas, he’s kept the boat afloat, he’s kept his crew safe. And then ultimately he made absolutely the correct decision to get off and to get his ten crew members safely to boat.
So ABN TWO will be accompanied into land by a navy vessel?
'That’s our understanding at the moment. HMS Mersey will escort ABN AMRO TWO all the way into land until they are comfortable and happy, and that will probably take something in the order of 15 to 20 hours before they reach the Lizard and its our understanding that they will stand by and watch over the guys.
'If the sea state became flat enough and they could deploy a RIB they might choose to take some of the crew members off ABN AMRO TWO and onto Mersey, but we are not sure about that right now.
What is the future of movistar?
'Well there are only a couple of things that can happen to movistar really.
'She has drogues out the back so she’ll be running stern to the wind, and as the wind increases and the storm comes through the motion of the sea will become quite violent. What that could do is it could actually break the fin away from the hull and if that happens the boat will quickly capsize and fairly quickly after turn upside down.
'But the good thing about these boats is they have six collision bulkheads, and so they have enormous air reservoirs inside them. If the keel was to fall off the boat would stay afloat, upside down for a very long time.
'The other alternative is that the keel doesn’t dislodge: that the rope and the webbing and whatever the boys did to secure the keel inside the boat is sufficient, and that the storm passes through, that the boat stays afloat, and basically hangs on. A salvage vessel can come pick it up and slowly tow it back to port where it can be fixed.
Glenn, what are your thoughts on how these incidents impact the Volvo Ocean Race?
'Well every incident like this impacts the Volvo Ocean Race. We have to learn from it. The sailors come in and give us their thoughts on what went well, what didn’t go well. It’s a learning experience for absolutely everyone and we will all be touched and altered by all the sequence of events that have happened out here. I don’t think any of us will ever be the same.
'And yet we have to press on. We have an event, we have racing sail boats out there. We have a winner of the race in fact, in ABN AMRO ONE coming into Portsmouth. And we have to continue to learn and improve and modify, and create a great finish for the race.'
by www.volvooceanrace.com
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