Baffling Jury decision over refusal to allow unusable sail replacement

by Sail-World.com NZL on 18 Apr 2015 The International Jury for the Volvo Ocean Race has denied Team SCA’s request to replace their Race FR0 with their pre-race FR0 after their sail was badly damaged during a crash gybe on Leg 5 from Auckland to Itajai.

During the incident on Day 7 of Leg 5, the boat broached and the FR0 (a fractional Code Zero headsail) tore down the luff and horizontally across the sail to the leech causing the boat to crash gybe. The majority of the sail ended up in the water where it continued to flog, while the crew recovered from the broach and then recovered the sail.

In their submission to the International Jury, the team stated that they considered that the incident was a racing incident, and one that occurs in trans-ocean races. Indeed two other boats in the fleet also suffered similar wipeouts on the same day/night.

The sail, is used in heavy downwind conditions, and upwind in light airs. The team elected not to try and repair the sail onboard as it was too badly damaged, that opinion was confirmed by the Shore Support crew responsible for servicing sails on all Volvo Ocean Race boats.

The report from the Volvo Ocean Race Boatyard Sail Loft deemed that the damaged sail was unusable. It also questioned the structural integrity. The report stated that ‘given the size of the tear and the area of damaged cloth it is not possible to repair SCA’s FR0 to a standard where it would be suitable for the remaining legs of the Race’ and concluded that it was ‘not repairable for the purpose of being used for further racing.’

Sam Davies, Team SCA skipper, commented: “We are of course incredibly disappointed with the ruling. Not being able to use the FRO for two thirds of Leg 5 had a major impact on our performance. We will now look to do everything in our power to try to make this sail as usable and as safe as possible as, if this sail breaks again, there is potential for further damage to the boat. But the reality is that there will always be risk factors associated with the sail especially as we still have some 10,000 miles of racing left.”

Following the ruling it is not known if the Sail Loft will attempt to repair the unrepairable sail, with just a two days remaining until the start of leg 6.

The Jury Decision has not yet been published in regard to this incident.

Sails have been a subject of much discussion across the fleet since the start of the race and Team SCA say they raised concerns on the limited sail numbers when the rule was first published. Race rules allow each team to have only eight sails onboard with four as back-up, which is the smallest inventories that this Race has seen.

With the sailing making team hard a work the rest of crew is now making their final preparations ahead of the Leg Start on Sunday. As part of the crew rotation Justine Mettraux (SUI) and Sally Barkow (USA) rejoin the team for this leg, replacing Sara Hastreiter and Elodie Mettraux (SUI) who sit this leg out. Corinna Halloran (USA) will be the OnBoard Reporter.