Barcelona World Race - Spain’s Olympic sailing heroes have arrived

by Barcelona World Race on 10 Dec 2010 Barcelona World Race update.

Spain's Olympic sailing heroes have a remarkable story, one which will certainly be heavily followed as they take on the globe for the first time as a duo in the Barcelona World Race, but Spain’s Olympic sailing heroes Iker Martinez and Xabi Fernandez slipped anonymously, almost unnoticed into Barcelona early this morning completing their delivery from their training base in Sanxenxo.

In light early morning rain, after a slow final night after the overnight breeze had all but deserted them, the double Olympic medallists and three times 49er World Champions docked at 0600hrs CET (0500hrs GMT) this Thursday morning looking relaxed and pleased to have put the passage behind them.

Although both have raced round the world on the Volvo Ocean Race, they had never set foot on an IMOCA Open 60 until April this year when they set out on this adventure, taking delivery of the former Foncia, the Farr design which Michel Desjoyeaux won the 2008-9 Vendée Globe on. Since then they have clocked up as many miles as possible, notably competing in June’s Vuelta España a Vela and doing October’s training circuit from Barcelona to the Canaries and back to Sanxenxo via Portimao.

In a race which places an exceptional premium on working as a duo none of the fleet’s partnerships have bonds which are as well founded over as many years and as successful. Iker and Xabi have sailed together since 1999, brothers in arms travelling to the four corners of the world. As well as success they have ridden out adversities together and they are fierce, exceptionally competitive fighters.

Iker Martinez confirmed this morning:

'We had a very good trip, we had to stop before Gibraltar which was unexpected because of the wind, and a little bit before that in Cascais which was planned. We stopped in Cascais to do some changes on that boat, but then we had to stop before the Straits because it was very windy and we did not want to cross upwind, so we stopped there which was fine.

It is a place we know very well and we have a lot of friends there, so we just stopped for 24 hours and that let us cross though the Straits reaching.

Then after that is was all good, not much wind and some motoring, just delivering the boat.'
'At the beginning we were pushing hard, just going down the Portuguese coast we wanted to go strong and go pretty hard and that is what we did. We had very strong winds then, more than was forecast, we had 35 to 40 knots.
We had some little problems but everything is solved now, which is nice.'

'It feels good to be here now, to have everything ready. It feels like the start date is almost here and we are almost prepared. Lately we have just been thinking about the spares, and the Plan B for everything, so that has been a bit more taking time than sailing, so that was why we wanted to go and sail and train a little bit.'

'We some very good training together on the race down to the Canaries, we sailed to here double-handed to get here for that, then we did the qualification down to the Canaries, and then up to Sanxenxo and that was a big sail together, and that was good.'

'We feel good about the whole programme. You always feel like you are late, but I am sure that everyone here says the same thing. If you had one more year to prepare you would for sure, but obviously the time is what we have had is what we had, and that’s it and we are there. We are not bad which is the most important thing. So, we are now just looking forward to setting off. We have done nothing big with the boat, it was already a good boat.

'We have spent more time trying to have very good sails. Most of our time has been taken trying to learn. We have had to learn, for both of us. In January we were in the Bahamas in the 49er Worlds, and we had not even seen one of these boats, ever. We feel this is something very nice, it has been pretty easy sailing as a team, but then this is a new boat for us and we started only in April.

'And with these big boats you sail and you repair, and you sail and repair. We did not spend as much time sailing as we would have liked, but we are here, but we are here.

'We have little things to do. Christmas in the middle so we will be with our families, and spend some quiet time. We have to put the new sails on and do the measurement. But we should be ready to go if the start was in a week’s time.'

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