Tagesberichte siehe Menu unten
4 January 2012
Final miles for Phesheya-Racing
On New Year’s Day, the South African duo of Nick Leggatt and Phillippa Hutton-Squire and Class40 Phesheya-Racing began sailing parallel to the coast of South Island, New Zealand, for the final 600 miles to the double-handed Global Ocean Race (GOR) Leg 2 finish line in Wellington. South-westerly breeze of between 25-30 knots pushed the fifth-placed GOR Class40 along the coast making the South African’s best speeds of the entire 7,000-mile voyage across the Indian Ocean.
“We’ve had some awesome sailing at last,” confirms Phillippa Hutton-Squire. “Covering 274 miles in 24 hours at an average speed of 11.42 knots and in one three-hour period we averaged 13.1 knots on the GOR tracking system.” The four year-old, first generation Akilaria Class40 began performing like a new boat: “Phesheya-Racing loved the conditions,” Hutton-Squire continues. “A long and high swell with the wind lined up perfectly to the waves. We reefed the indexsail and hoisted the bluQube A6 and she took off like a rocket, often doing 17, 18 or 19 knots with ease.”
On Monday, as Phesheya-Racing drew level with the latitude of Cape Foulwind on the South Island’s west coast, conditions changed and some inexplicable damage was discovered, stalling the South Africans: “The wind suddenly began to change, becoming shifty and gusty once again, so our speeds began to drop once more,” Nick Leggatt explains. “Daylight also revealed that we had broken another batten during the night,” he reports. “How that happened is a bit of a mystery as we didn't carry out any manoeuvres during the night.” The indexsail was dropped and the duo replaced the batten from the selection of spares lashed to the guardrails. “Once that was done, we changed from the bluQube A6 to the slightly larger and lighter A4 spinnaker,” says Hutton-Squire.
|
