Volvo Ocean Race - Dongfeng​ Race Team suffer​ damage

by Dongfeng Race Team on 22 Jan 2015 Volvo Ocean Race 2014-15 Leg 3 update from Dongfeng Race Team:

All hands on deck as Chinese crew suffer damage to their boat as the tack line of an important sail (J1) broke suddenly sending the 132 m² sail shooting up the forestay in a matter of seconds. The team have managed to set up a temporary replacement but the reality is, this is a rude awakening of how far away the finish line is.

945 nautical miles to be precise.

'I hate having problems on the boat – but in a way I’m happy this might have woken everyone up to the fact that we are a very long way from winning this leg still…' – Bruno Dubois

For the non-sailors out there, each boat carries an identical selection of sails and each sail is a weapon of choice for different weather conditions. Sailing upwind (into the wind) to Sanya, the J1 sail is the obvious choice but in a dramatic moment onboard earlier today the tack line of the J1 suddenly broke, provoking immediate action from the crew to hoist the J2 (smaller than the J1 therefore slower) and maintain as much speed as possible whilst dropping the J1 to to repair the strop needed to be able to rehoist it.

Onboard handyman Kevin Escoffier and the guys jumped on the problem immediately and it took them a bit over 30 minutes to set up a temporary replacement strop and get the J1 back up, and the boat back to 100%. Escoffier is now aiming to build a full temporary replacement onboard as best he can, with exact specifications of the strop being emailed from the VOR Boatyard team.

Speaking to his team by Inmarsat phone a few moments ago with everything back under control, Caudrelier stressed how far from the finish line, and from a victory in to Sanya, they still are. 'It was a good reminder to us onboard if we needed one, and I hope for those on land following, that we have a very long and treacherous way still to go on this leg. Of course we are happy to have a healthy lead, but that lead can disappear very easily through mechanical failure like this and lots of other kinds of problems. There are many traps that we can fall in to before arriving in Sanya – firstly many types of boat and sail failure traps like this one. We could so easily break a rudder by hitting something like we did on leg 1 – there is so much debris in the water. And then the unlit fishing boats at night – a major danger – a collision could end the entire race. Then tactical ones like at what point shall we tack to the north, we could easily lose 30 miles by getting that wrong and holding on too long, and we don’t have the luxury of waiting to see what the others do. And weather traps – off the coast of Vietnam we might get local effects like in the Malacca Straits, and the finish in to Sanya looks like very light winds too where anything can happen. We’ve already seen how easy it is to lose 85 miles in a few hours. In short a lot of reasons why we can still lose this leg.'

Anyone who has followed the first two legs of this race will tell you that racing is ridiculously close with the one-design boats. Anyone who has followed the Volvo Ocean Race before will tell you that anything can happen.

As a recent comment from a fan on the team’s Facebook says, 'Leading for 18 days is a huge achievement in itself and whatever happens from here on out, you guys have proven yourselves. I hope it continues.'

This leg is far from over for Dongfeng Race Team, or any of the teams for that matter.

A bit more detail, explained for the non-racing sailors…

The Volvo Ocean 65s have 3 headsails (the sails used for going upwind, against the wind) – J1, J2 and J3 – decreasing in size. The J2 and J3 are on furlers – so they are hoisted in furled up position (rolled up around a cable), unfurled when ready – and the reverse when they are no longer needed. The J1 however uses a quite traditional system of ‘hanks’ to attach to the forestay it is held in place by along its leading edge. So when the tack line broke – a cable that comes through the deck and holds the bottom forward corner of the sail down, the sail would have shot upwards with the loads on it – until the crew got it under control. In such a situation the priority is to get a different sail up (clearly not the right one for those conditions) to limit the losses. Then look at what kind of repair can be done.

A good link on the Volvo Ocean Race website about what sails the boats have onboard – it’s the smallest inventory of sails probably ever on this race – and the loss of just one of them would severely damage any team’s hopes in Sanya as the backup options onboard are a long way from optimal performance.