Movistar changed rams to make performance gain

by Lizzie Green on 18 Jan 2006 Movistar (Bouwe Bekking), which made a spectacularly quick turn around in Albany, SW Australia yesterday, to make repairs to the damaged port hydraulic ram is still experiencing problems.

The obvious question is, how did movistar manage to sail 20,000 nautical miles and beat the 24-hour monohull world record, before the start of the Volvo Ocean Race without having real problems with the hydraulics? Bekking’s answer: they [the rams] were nearly double the weight, and working with a less pressurized system, and I changed them for ‘performance’ gain to be made. In Melbourne we will rip these ones out and send them back to the manufacturer and put our stainless steel ones back in movistar. The rods were changed in Cape Town after recommendation based on the experience Ericsson Racing Team had on leg one, but a frustrated Bekking says, I guess they [the manufacturer] must have mixed up the material numbers, and made the rods out of recycled coco-cola cans.

Although the new rams will be nearly double the weight of the current ones, Bekking said, at least you can sail the boat full throttle and sleep a little better when off watch.

The light winds ahead will be tricky and not suited to the leading two Dutch boats, ABN AMRO ONE (Mike Sanderson) and ABN AMRO TWO (Sebastien Josse), but it will suit the injured movistar as they will not need to cant the keel to gain stability. Pirates of the Caribbean (Paul Cayard) has been almost becalmed for most of the last six hours after resuming racing at 1707 GMT.

Bekking concluded his message this evening by repeating a conversation he had with crewman Mike Joubert. Joubert was part of the Assa Abloy Racing Team four years ago which finished with two bad positions on legs one and two, but overcame this to strike within inches of winning the 2001-02 event, eventually finishing in second place. What I said to Mike today has hit like a hammer. I asked him in what position they were after leg two with Assa Abloy in the last race. Slowly a smile appeared on his face, changing into a big grin. There is still a lot of racing to be done.

LEG TWO DAY 16, 17.1.06, 2200 GMT POSITION REPORT
YACHT LAT LONG DTF SMG 24 Hour Run 24 Hour Speed DTL DTLC SGPTS LPTS TLPTS RPTD ETA OVERALL
1 ABN1 38 33.56S 125 59.59E 00925 14.8 329 13.7 00000 +00000 7 7.0 14.0 29.0 20/01/06 16:35:__ 1
2 ABN2 38 09.73S 125 12.19E 00965 13.7 310 12.9 00040 -00009 6 6.0 12.0 24.0 20/01/06 20:01:__ 2
3 MOVI 37 52.35S 123 07.65E 01065 12.1 256 10.7 00140 -00016 4.5 5.0 9.5 15.5 21/01/06 04:48:__ 3
4 POTC 35 14.08S 118 05.68E 01338 02.7 016 00.7 00413 -00064 4.5 4.0 8.5 13.5 22/01/06 06:47:__ 5
5 AUS1 40 34.18S 110 19.07E 01831 12.1 301 12.5 00906 -00006 1.5 3.0 4.5 9.5 24/01/06 14:06:__ 7
6 BRA1 40 31.88S 086 20.39E 02869 17.5 405 16.9 01944 +00026 1 2.0 3.0 15.5 28/01/06 18:43:__ 3
7 ERIC 33 57.56S 025 37.90E - - - - - - - - - - - -


ABN1 ABN AMRO ONE
ABN2 ABN AMRO TWO
AUS1 ING Real Estate Brunel
BRA1 Brasil 1
ERIC Ericsson Racing Team
MOVI movistar
POTC Pirates of the Caribbean

DTF: distance to finish, 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

SGPTS: points scored at scoring gates on this leg to date
LPTS: projected leg points
TLPTS: projected overall leg points including actual points from scoring gates
RPTD: projected overall points including actual points from scoring gates
OVERALL: projected position in race overall if yacht maintains current position