A Spanish Armada of help for movistar in Volvo OR

by Lizzie Green, Volvo OR Media on 17 Nov 2005 It has been revealed in the last 12 hours that the damage caused to movistar (Bouwe Bekking) may in fact have been caused by a submerged object. A radio interview with Pedro Campos this morning shed some more light on the situation, the team’s contingency plans and the help they are receiving from some very influential areas.

Movistar has now been hauled out of the water in Portimao, Portugal, and the bottom few feet of the port dagger board and part of the single rudder have been sheared off. There is also damage to the keel which was at the time canted to the starboard side of the yacht leading the team to the inevitable conclusion that they may have hit a container or something else ‘pretty solid’.

The jury is still out, in the movistar camp as to whether the yacht will be shipped down to Cape Town or resume racing.

‘We have received personal telephone calls from the King of Spain, from the central government, the secretary of the state, the president of Galicia, the Federation, Yacht Clubs and many companies offering us help, as well as the America’s Cup Challenge, Desafío Español 2007, who is going to be our main assistant [in repairing the boat]. The media coverage is incredible in Spain, everybody following the boat hour after hour and many people here in Portimao.

So we feel very well and confident and we owe something to all these people, to try and do our best and to keep fighting because it is a long way to go to the finish and many things could happen in this long race.’

Out in the Atlantic there has been no change on the leader board for 24 hours. Brasil 1 (Torben Grael) heads up the charge south, Ericsson (Neal McDonald) is slowly reeling them in from second (currently 13 miles behind the leader) and ABN AMRO ONE and ABN AMRO TWO are fighting it out for third with the ‘old boys’ on top, for the moment.

A positive and jovial Steve Hayles, Ericsson’s navigator recounted today some of the more light hearted moments from the past few days.

‘You also laugh about the scary things too; on the first night we set a spinnaker in hairy conditions and took off like a robbers dog with so much water on deck the Guillermo made one of his very dry comments in his cool Spanish style about driving a submarine. We are all tethered to the boat at this stage to keep us onboard which is great for safety but very restricting in its movement.

‘I was trimming the main and sat furthest forward and could see a huge breaking wave coming side on; you shout 'wave' or something ridiculous and you hold your breath and brace for the impact which is always impressively hard.

A second or two later when you can open your eyes and breathe again you check everyone out. Unfortunately Guillermo took the brunt of the 'hit' and was smashed off the wheel and was lying in a heap at the back of the boat. This in itself is obviously not funny; but watching everyone trying to dive for the wheel but not being able to move because of their harness was (after the event) hysterical.’

Elsewhere in the Atlantic Sunergy and Friends (Grant Wharington) have cleared Madeira and are also making the big push south with the help of the north easterly trade winds at 15-18 knots.

And finally Chris Bedford our resident meteorological guy about town explains what he thinks may occur as the fleet near the ITCZ (The inter tropical convergence zone – known as the doldrums).

‘The forecasts are smiling on the boats. The Doldrums are forecast to narrow with a nice crossing zone around 30W at about 5 deg N. The boats will need to be quick to get there as showers and thunderstorms will start to close in on this zone in about three days. Sunergy and Friends will have some time to watch how the lead boats fare through the doldrums, hoping to pick up some information on what path is most likely to provide benefit.












LEG ONE DAY 5 16.11.05, 1600 GMT POSITION REPORT
Yacht Latitude Longitude DTF CMG SMG DTL DTLC LPTS ETA Overall

1 BRA1 23 13.55N 028 56.36W 04996 185 15.6 00000 +00000 7.0 01/12/05 __:__:__ 1

2 ERIC 23 29.76N 029 30.32W 05009 191 15.8 00013 +00000 6.0 01/12/05 __:__:__ 2

3 ABN1 23 38.64N 030 07.28W 05014 184 16.8 00018 +00007 5.0 01/12/05 __:__:__ 3

4 ABN2 23 45.53N 030 10.16W 05021 187 16.6 00025 +00005 4.0 01/12/05 __:__:__ 4

5 SUNF 30 27.78N 021 31.21W 05511 206 13.0 00515 -00017 3.0 11/12/05 __:__:__ 7

6 MOVI 37 07.64N 008 31.80W 06157 000 00.0 01161 -00094 2.0 22/02/06 __:__:__ 5

7 POTC 38 41.54N 009 24.95W 06213 000 00.0 01217 -00094 1.0 22/03/06 __:__:__ 6

ABN1 ABN AMRO ONE
ABN2 ABN AMRO 2
BRA1 Brasil 1
ERIC Ericsson Racing Team
MOVI movistar
POTC Pirates of the Caribbean
SUNF Sunergy and Friends

DTF: Distance to finish, CMG: Course made good, SMG: Speed made good, DTL: distance to leader, DTLC: distance to leader change; the difference between the distance from the boat to the leader taken at the time of the last six hour poll, and the distance from the boat to the leader at the previous poll.