Team Vestas Wind optimistic of making Lisbon start in Volvo Ocean Race

by Sail-World.com: NZL on 16 Apr 2015 Team Vestas Wind's shore manager Neil Cox has paid tribute to the joint efforts to return the Danish boat into the Volvo Ocean Race 2014-15. He is cautiously optimistic they are on track.

The team ripped the bottom and rudders out of their Volvo Ocean 65 on November 29 during Leg 2 when they collided with a reef in the Indian Ocean, are rebuilding the boat in the Persico boatyard in Bergamo, Italy.

The New Zealand crew members, Tony Rae and Rob Salthouse will leave for Bergamo at the end of April.

They have set themselves a very tight schedule of returning to the race by the Lisbon stopover in late May/early June to sail the final two legs. The fleet is scheduled to depart from Lisbon, Portugal for Lorient, France, on June 6.

The main issue for Team Vestas Wind, once she is in the water will be time to work the boat up through sea trials, as in many respects they are back to the state they were in soon after she was originally launched.

Many of the individual customisations permitted by the Volvo Ocean Race regulations will go back on the rebuilt hull and decks, but the team was already on a very compressed timeline to make the race start in Alicante, and is expected to struggle to achieve the level of consistency in performance of the other six entrants.

There have already been huge efforts to help facilitate Vestas Wind's return with Race partners, Maersk Line, and sponsors, GAC & GAC Pindar, overseeing the boat's crossing from Malaysia.

Cox hopes they can make that deadline, but warns it is still a huge challenge despite the great teamwork between the various cogs in a big wheel, including Persico and Green Marine (Britain).



“Like all intense build projects, you can see the signs of wear on the guys, but to their credit they have not yet shown any sign of things being in the ‘too hard’ basket,” he told Volvo Ocean Race on Wednesday.

“The reality is, though, that we are going to have some challenging days in front of us to hold this all together as required. But we have a pretty determined group.”

The immediate target is have the boat ready to be loaded on to a truck from the shed at Persico for the long journey to Lisbon in six weeks.

A weary looking Cox outlined the progress that has been made in the long hours worked by the building team.

“The deck is on, the boat is out of the mould. All the primary structure is in the boat and a large percentage of the internal secondary structure and detailing is underway,” he said.

“The hull surface has come out of the mould nicely and we have the paint team starting on all the surface prep work here, filling in any pin holes before the application of primer/undercoat.

“With this done, we want to offer the teams from Diverse, Navtec, Livewire, Cariboni (working on internal components such as the electronics and hydraulics) as much uninterrupted runway through the boat as possible.

“We are still receiving required equipment daily by the pallet load and have had the support of both Green Marine and Volvo Ocean Race shared services helping with the transfer of both information and parts.”

Meanwhile, work on the racing boats that contested the treacherous Leg 5, has progressed without major issue.

That includes Dongfeng Race Team (Charles Caudrelier/FRA). The boat’s mast, which was fractured during the stage and forced their retirement, is being replaced with a spare one flown in from Abu Dhabi.

Caudrelier and his crew expect to return their boat to the Itajaí waters on Thursday, ahead of Saturday’s Team Vestas Wind Itajaí In-Port Race.

The other teams – Abu Dhabi Ocean Racing (Ian Walker/GBR), MAPFRE (Iker Martínez/ESP), Team Alvimedica (Charlie Enright/USA), Team Brunel (Bouwe Bekking/NED) and Team SCA (Sam Davies/GBR) – had much smaller repair lists and are all reported to be back in perfect shape for race weekend (April 18-19).