Team Brunel finishes in the third place

by Team Brunel - Robbert-Jan Metselaar on 7 May 2015 After a thrilling final, Team Brunel has finished in third place in the sixth leg of the Volvo Ocean Race. The Dutch sailing team of skipper Bouwe Bekking took 17 days and nine hours to complete the leg to the American port of Newport. Team Brunel is now in third place in the general ranking.

“It’s always good to be back on the podium. But the race is lost for us now, because Abu Dhabi has an inaccessible lead now compared to us,” Bouwe Bekking said just after the finished in Newport. “We will aim for the overall second place in Goteborg now, we want to win the overall in-port series and of course we still want to win legs! The guys sailed well, but it’s a bummer we didn’t win. It was a really close call at the finish line again. Unfortunately, the leg didn't last a little bit longer.”

After the start, the leg developed into a drag race towards the north-east in order to pick up the south-easterly trade wind as quickly as possible. In their search for these prevailing winds, the teams set a course to the north-east, driven by a northerly wind. About five days after the start of the leg in Itajaí, the wind turned to the north-east. The fleet was finally able to pick up the south-easterly trade wind off the most westerly point of Brazil, but the search for a prevailing wind resumed after crossing the Equator. In this case, the target was the north-easterly trade wind.

Team Brunel took over the lead from Abu Dhabi Ocean Racing off the coast of Puerto Rico. However, thanks to a collision with a large fish, Bouwe Bekking’s team was unable to maintain this lead for long. “We suddenly heard a dull thud and our speed dropped immediately,” reported onboard media reporter Stefan Coppers from the boat. “A brief inspection showed that one of the two rudders had speared a big fish. We pushed the fish off the rudder with a spare batten. Unfortunately, the fish did not survive the collision.” In this part of the ocean, the team also had to cope with the problem of seaweed, which made sailing at night practically impossible. “We tried to keep the rudder blades and keel free from seaweed by manoeuvring and jerking the helm,” says Gerd-Jan Poortman.

The fleet was sailing close to each other for almost the entire leg. When the boats entered the Bermuda Triangle – an imaginary triangle between Miami, the Bermuda islands and Puerto Rico – an important tactical decision had to be made. “Here you decide whether to stay further out to sea and opt for the shortest route or sail closer to the coast and take advantage of the Gulf Stream,” continues Gerd-Jan Poortman. “This is a major conveyor belt of relatively warm water in the Atlantic Ocean. The current starts in the Gulf of Mexico and then flows northwards along the American coast at an average speed of four knots before turning east about 100 miles from Newport. Finally, the teams chose to use the strong Gulf Stream.”

In the last two days before the finish, a large area of high pressure and its associated transition zones blocked the route to Newport. According to Gerd-Jan Poortman, you can compare a transition zone with two currents of water meeting. “At the exact point where they meet, the water will stand still until one of the currents is stronger and pushes the other one away. The trick is to find the place where the wind stands still the least. A transition zone can mean the difference between winning and losing a leg.”

In the days to come, the crew will go through their mandatory medical check-up. After that, the sailors of Team Brunel – which is sponsored by the international interim employment agency Brunel – will recover from this sixth leg. Meanwhile the technical crew of the Dutch Volvo Ocean Race team, which apart from main sponsor Brunel is also sponsored by Moduleo, Robeco and Schouten Global, will start to carry out minor repairs and maintenance. The sailors will get a few days off, after which they will have to prepare for the In-Port race and the next leg, which starts on 17 May.