Update from Loki on damage during storm

by Cameron Miles on 24 Jul 2007 Cameron Miles, Sailing Master on Loki, updates progress.

You may or may not have heard that on the voyage to the UK, the container ship carrying Loki struck a force 11-12 gale. Some damage occurred to our mast, however after an inspection in La Spezia by our boat captain Darren Senogles we were able to determine the extent of the damage and prepare for the ship’s arrival at Tilbury Dock in England.

Due to some extraordinary efforts by Craig Stanbury at Peters & May, Darren (‘Dags’), Adam, and Dave Sampson (‘High Tower’), we had two trucks waiting for Loki at the dock.

The 30 metre rig was loaded onto one truck and was sent straight down to Formula Spars at Lymington. The boat was loaded onto the second truck with her keel and sent to Hamble Yacht Services. That was at the beginning of last week.

As we now stand, the rig shall be completed today and trucked back to the boat on Monday and stepped on Wednesday so we should be sailing by the end of next week.

I will be leaving next Thursday 24 so we can get on the water ASAP and get some rig tuning done and check all is in good order.

SKANDIA COWES WEEK, 4-11 AUGUST
If the crew is as anxious to get on the water as I am then we shall be in good shape once the start gun goes for heat one. Our crew is looking pretty good with our tactician, old, old friend Andy Beadsworth, having just won the 2007 Etchells World Championship on the same body of water just last month, and our navigator Adrienne Cahalan coming directly from the Transpac Race from LA to Hawaii. We can't really ask for better people on our boat.

Even our esteemed owner shall be fresh from some hard racing at a Swan regatta in Newport Rhode Island, whilst Chris Links shall be jetting in after just having completed the Audi Sydney Gold Coast Yacht Race on Wild Oats X at the end of this month.

The entry list for IRC is massive and we will be one of the largest boats in our division, but without looking at the list too carefully, I would imagine the only competition we have to worry about is ourselves. It we make minimal mistakes we should do pretty well as we have already shown by winning the two major Sydney regattas on the Australian circuit prior to Christmas.

ROLEX FASTNET RACE, 12-15 AUGUST
The fleet for this race has been limited to 300 boats so it should make for an incredible start line. More on this race next week.