Volvo Ocean Race- Dongfeng Race Team break rudder after collision

by Volvo Ocean Race on 18 Oct 2014 Dongfeng Race Team hit hit an unidentified object, at 0210UTC on Saturday. The impact broke one of their two rudders, and it has been swapped out.

The downtime for repairs cost the Chinese team their lead in the race. It is reported that they were sailing again at speeds of 20kts after 30 minutes of downtime.

The team's onboard reporter Yann Riou described the situation:

At 0210 UTC, Thomas was driving when we hit something. The impact was violent. We didn't know what we hit. We checked the windward runner, we started to check the keel, and we wiped out.

Then we realised the leeward rudder was gone.

Thomas: 'I flew from the steering wheel!'

We checked if there was any water coming in the boat.

At 0220 UTC, we gybed.

We had two options: installing the emergency rudder, as an emergency rudder, or removing what was left of the old rudder, and putting the new one in place. We decided to go for the second option.

We prepared the rudder, we furled the A3, took it down and dropped the mainsail. At that moment, we saw Abu Dhabi Ocean Racing passing next to us (…).

Thomas put the diving suit on. He jumped into the water. Kevin was in the aft compartment, and the rest of the crew on deck. We removed what was left from the old rudder (not much), and we put the new one in place.

We hoisted the main, we hoisted the A3, we gybed, and we unfurled the A3. We are now sailing 20 knots.

Charles: 'It is not easy to accept this kind of things, when they happen. We are all disappointed. We haven’t got any position report yet, but we obviously know that Abu Dhabi is now in front of us. We believe the Spanish boat is ahead of us too. We don’t really know about the other boats.

The fleet continues to gybe south down the West African Coast past small fishing villages and land marks. MAPFRE has been going the closest to the shore. Since 1800 UTC they gybed in, sometimes getting at close as 0.5 nm to the beach.

Abu Dhabi are now leading but they also reported narrowly missed a net yesterday afternoon. The advantage was it was light so they could take avoiding action.

Other boats to report catching something on their keel are Brunel and Team SCA.

The Dutch boat even had to send a swimmer into the water and dive down to get a strip of rubber from their keel.

Team SCA also showed an irregular track and reported running into a fishing net. This did not help their course and lost more ground to the fleet.

The fleet may not gybe back into the land again as the land curves back in to the east, south of Cape Blanc on the Noudhbou coast.