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18.10.2014
At 0210 UTC Dongfeng Race Team hit an unknown object
in the Atlantic Ocean
IT’S NOT HOW BIG THE PROBLEM IS, IT’S HOW YOU DEAL WITH IT!
“Last night we were leading by 18 miles and I went to bed happy…” – Team Director, Bruno Dubois
At 0210 UTC Dongfeng Race Team hit an unknown object in the Atlantic Ocean just off the coast of Africa and broke their rudder. This resulted in the team performing an emergency rudder replacement, a difficult operation in the pitch black of night, in less than 2 hours. After fighting to keep first place for nearly two days, they watched Abu Dhabi Ocean Racing sail straight past them as they dropped from first place to third, and then retook 2nd again as the pushed hard to regain lost ground.
Watch the video here TECH STUFF EXPLAINED for the non-sailors below!
When we received the information from the boat that they had destroyed the port (left hand of the two rudders on the Volvo Ocean 65s) rudder Thomas [Rouxel] was already underwater checking the extent of the damage, which is not an easy task in the pitch black of the Atlantic. At this point the team did not have a position report and wouldn’t have one for another few hours but watching Abu Dhabi Ocean Racing sail past was enough to let them know that their reign in first place was over.
Leading the fleet had felt great, naturally because that’s how being first makes you feel, but also because nobody expected it. The relief Charles Caudrelier felt at proving his team could compete in these conditions with the likes of Abu Dhabi Ocean Racing is undeniable. “At least knowing we have good boat speed is one less thing to worry about,” he smiled yesterday before the incident.
The object hit remains unidentified. “I don’t know what we smashed [in to] but the rudder has been cleanly broken off [near the hull],” explained Kevin Escoffier as he inspected the damage.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RdV2kCrZ8rU&list=UUGCGBd7AyJsjPqok9W8e39Q&index=1
Watch th?e video ?of the e?mergency? replace?ment her?e
It was an impressive turnaround for such a complex task, not forgetting that communication onboard was in English only, none of the sailors’ first language. “It took us two hours of work but we finally have the spare rudder in. It has been a really great effort from the team and I’m actually quite proud of us doing that.” – Martin Strömberg.
The determined men onboard Dongfeng are still fighting as they tussle with Abu Dhabi and Team Brunel for the top spot, not letting their 2-hour ‘pit stop’ phase them. May they have some strong and favourable east winds and may they come back stronger than ever.
TECH STUFF EXPLAINED for the non-sailors!
What does it meant to change a rudder on a Volvo Ocean 65 like this? Well first of all its not something you want or necessarily expect to have to do – but you know it might be necessary. For this reason all the boats carry a spare rudder, in addition to the two that are fitted to the boat through bearings in the back part of the hull.
Why two?
Well modern race boats are very wide to give them more power (and therefore speed), and as a result the traditional system of old with one rudder in the middle of the boat no longer works because it would be out of the water half the time. And the rudder is the same as the wheels turning a car around a corner – losing it is like the steering cable snapping on a car! So we have two…one of which is in the water most the time, the other as soon as the boat heels, spends a lot of time in the air. Since the rudder, along with the keel, are the only bits of the boat under the water for long, if the boat sails over an object, its going to hit one or other or both. With Dongfeng racing hard and fast at 17 to 20 knots (fastest yet in the race), an impact with a solid object – a UFO (unidentified floating object not a spaceship!) – can cause a lot of damage. In this case, the rudder was totally broken in two, quite close to the hull. Initial inspection confirmed no water was coming in the boat, and for now there is no apparent damage to the keel or hull either.
So…there we are, now the rudder that was helping us steer the boat is no longer there, what next?
Well an inevitable wipeout – just what you car would do if the steering wheel was no longer connected to the wheels! The immediate action is to try to get the boat on the other gybe (i.e wind coming from the other side of the boat), so that it is heeling the other way, and the good remaining rudder now doing the work. You can see if you rewind the tracker that this happened pretty quickly after the collision, shortly after 0200 UTC (Greenwich Mean Time). Now its everyone on deck and awake and prepare a tricky manoeuvre that the guys have done before in their careers and had practised as a team together on the way to Alicante pre-start, albeit in daytime. First they had to decide if they would just fit the spare rudder (all the teams have to carry one) as an emergency rudder (attached on the stern/back of the boat, outside the hull, as a way to get control back), or to a full replacement – requiring the old rudder to be dropped out of its bearing in to the water, and the new rudder being pushed under the boat by a diver and up the hole back in to the bearing. The latter would give Dongfeng, if the bearing hadn’t been damaged at all, full performance again. The former would compromise the control and therefore speed of the boat, but should be quicker to do.
The boys on Dongfeng chose the permanent solution, and fortunately the broken rudder came out quite easily (often its stuck as the collision can deform what is already a tight fit), and with some good work by Thomas Rouxel in the diving suit in the water, and some great coordinated crew work (remember its the middle of the night, pitch black and the boat is rolling around). Before doing the operation they needed to drop the A3, the biggest of the downwind sails at the front of the boat, slow the boat down right to a stop by dropping the sails, in order for Thomas to be able to do manage this in the water (if not imagine trying to do it as a water skier behind the boat!). So new rudder in, need to secure it down below, tighten up the housing that holds it in place (Kevin gets to work in the video)…ok guys, ready to go! Rehoist all the sails, gybe back to the favoured direction that we were on before, and get the show back on the road. About 2 hours from start to finish as Martin comments – and we are as proud as he says the team are onboard… Although they had no positions onboard at this time, they had seen Abu Dhabi and Vestas go past them…it would be a few hours later before an official poll would reach the boat to confirm they had slipped to 3rd, just a mile ahead of Vestas…and as we know on land but they don’t know yet, a great recovery to regain 2nd place. But it might be a bit harder to retake that lead from the race favourites Abu Dhabi – gutting for the boys on Dongfeng after stretching out an 18 mile lead just before this happened – but all part of ocean racing.
And we passed this big test with flying colours!
http://www.volvooceanrace.com/en/virtualeye.html
Still go?t it! Fi?ghting w?ith Team? Brunel ?and Abu ?Dhabi Oc?ean Raci?ng
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