Telefonica Blue vows to fight on despite jury rigged forestay

by Volvo Ocean Race media on 6 Mar 2009

Disappointment among the crew (l-r) Xabier Fernadez, Jordi Calafat and Jonathan Swain Gabriele Olivo/Telefonica Blue/Volvo Ocean Race http://www.volvooceanrace.org

Latest news from Telefonica Blue, which broke its forestay on leg 5 of the Volvo Ocean Race to Rio.

TELEFONICA BLUE LEG FIVE DAY 21 QFB: received 06.03.09 08:45 GMT

Hi there,

If the cloud from the other night was like a giant foot descending from the heavens and stamping on us, the events of this morning were like that massive foot had come back and kicked us square in the *!?*

I was awoken this morning by the sound of a massive bang and cries of 'everyone up!' coming from on deck. As the boat rolled over to windward on us, I hurried to pull my boots on and rushed upstairs in my thermals only to find the jib dragging in the water down the side of the boat, forestay and all. Luckily, due to some quick thinking by the guys who were on watch at the time, they were able to keep the rig upright and quickly secured it with spare halyards to prevent our situation becoming even worse.

After much scrambling around, the jib was hauled back on board and pulled from the now broken tough luff and after some work the forestay has been jury rigged back up in place to provide some extra support for the mast. Not an ideal situation at all, especially with so many miles to Rio to go. However, for now we have vowed to battle on albeit a bit worse for wear.

To add insult to injury we have wandered too close to the high pressure system and have spent much of the morning with very little breeze. Turning downwind to make repairs has only made the situation worse. We are back upwind again now though and battling to get back to the pressure. This luckily is slowly coming back to us but has taken most of the morning. Quite frankly it hasn't been our day.

Despite all the adversity thrown into our path, everyone onboard has remained upbeat and optimistic. I think we are all feeling that we have been quite lucky to escape with the mast intact and with the goal of getting to Rio still well within our grasp, even if now it might take a little longer... For sure it has been a bad day but if we are honest it could have been a whole lot worse too.

cheers, for now,

Simon Fisher - Strategist/Helmsman

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TELEFONICA BLUE LEG FIVE DAY 20 QFB: received 05.03.09 22:48 GMT

We were ripping along, making great speeds in 15 knots of breeze, when all of sudden a loud bang was heard from the rig. My first instinct was to look up, and saw immediately that the mast was still in one piece, and a fraction late, the headsail dropped in the water.

Forestay broken. It was around 06:30 in the morning, Jono [Swain] was driving, and his quick reaction to bear away saved the rig. Immediately we put some halyards on the bow, to stabilize the rig, as it was sweeping like a spaghetti pole.

We didn’t have to wake up the other guys, as they all had run up. First thing was to get the big jib out of the water, which was huge effort as it was filled with thousands of litres of water, but luckily we got it back in one piece. Then we had to get the sail out of the headfoil, which is a carbon fibre piece which slots over the actual forestay. That was easier said than done, but with some brute force that job was finished as well.

In the mean time we were running dead downwind, and working on a system to use the stay again, so at least we had something to jury rig the mast with. We did a rig check and all seems to be all right. In the mean time I had been on the phone with our shore manager, to go over eventual scenario’s, regarding spare pieces. By then I knew that the actual forestay hanger was broken, this is a 30 mm stainless steel piece, and it had snapped right through the middle.

One option was returning to NZL, but with Tom’s [Addis] feedback, the weather slot would have been a bad option time wise, so we decided to carry on. Let’s hope we get some downwind sailing, as there shouldn’t be any problems with that. But tight reaching and upwind will be slow, as we only can hoist a very little jib on separate stay and of course we don’t want to sacrifice the mast in any way.

Everybody is extremely disappointed, but we all having the same fighting spirit. We started well behind, and actually became first on the leader board yesterday, a huge reward for 21 days of working extremely hard. Of course this is a setback, but there is still a long way to go, WE WILL NOT GIVE UP!!!

Bouwe Bekking - Skipper

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