Volvo Ocean Race - It's a disaster says Telefonica Blue skipper
by Volvo Media and Sail-World on 15 Jun 2009
Telefonica Blue run aground the start of leg 9 from Marstrand to Stockholm
They hit rocks while racing at approximately 14 knots of boatspeed. After 2 hours of attempts by pilot boats and the coastguard, the boat was finally freed and has made its way back to MArstrand for a full inspection
Rick Tomlinson/Volvo Ocean Race
http://www.volvooceanrace.com
Bouwe Bekking - 'It is clearly our own mistake of course, we thought we were to leeward of the rock and clear of it and we smacked it right on the head ... '
Telefonica Blue ran aground on a rock shortly after the start of Leg 9 in Marstrand and has since served a two-hour penalty for suspending racing.
In fact, it took the crew two hours to free the stricken boat with the help of pliot vessels and support craft.
Bouwe Bekking and his men have returned to Marstrand to have the boat hauled out for a full assessment of the damage.
Bekking, who's boat suffered a similar mishap at the start of Leg 5 out of Qingdao, was understandably crestfallen by the setback. He explained what happened.
'We were sailing along under a Code Zero and a staysail and we had cleared the leeward mark by roughly two miles, doing about 16-17 knots and basically hit a rock straight on,' he said.
Asked whether the incident, a collision with a 1.5 metre rock, was down to a charting problem, he added: 'It is clearly our own mistake of course, we thought we were to leeward [of the rock] and clear of it and we smacked it right on the head.
'In that sense PUMA was right behind us and had a to make a big alteration of course as well. S*!t happens but it shouldn’t happen but ... clearly a mistake.'
As for the damage, Bekking said that was unclear until a full inspection had been made though they did take on water following damage to the port daggerboard. Early indications are not encouraging.
'It doesn’t look that good. We took quite a lot of water on board. The canard has been pushed through the daggerboard case which is where all the water was coming in from.
'We just have to assess the rest of the damage. We can see that we broke one of the rudders off. We have to see how the bulb will look and the keel. The good thing is that the keel is still there so the boats are very very strong. If you hit at 25-30 kph normally a boat would sink so thank you Volvo for a good rule.'
As for the lengthy battle to free the boat from the rock, Bekking added: 'We tried different options, we pulled a winch off, the co-ordination is always very difficult. We have to thank the Coast Guard, the pilots and the police here, they have been really really helpful.
'They managed to pull us off and get us safely to the harbour so a big thanks to them.'
Sail-World received an email from a Swedish sailor who described the exit from Marstrand this way:' On the large scale chart (above) you see Marstrand in the upper right corner and about 3 nm south at the red arrow they hit ground. On the close-up chart (right) you see the 1.5 meter rock in the middle.
'The intention was to go inside this (east), to leeward as it were, but apparently they ran straight up on it. To windward you see that it is also shallow 4-6 meters. The distance between the 1.5 m rock and the island to the east is about 200 meters. Except for the islands and rocks the depth is 20-30 meters but unless you stay offshore they are everywhere.'
Generally going south after this rock where they hit you would head at least a few hundred meters out to sea as there are just too many of little rocks our islands to keep track of, but certainly cutting the corner where they did was the shortest distance.'
It is easy to understand that you can hit ground in the area, all the more reason to be cautious.
In the short term, there is no prospect of points on this leg. And in looking ahead, if the damage is as severe as is suggested, it may be game over in the battle with PUMA for second place overall.
'Yes of course it is a disaster and everybody realises that. The most sad person is SciFi [Simon Fisher] . I don’t know how many thousand times he has said sorry. That’s how it is, we are a team we will come on top of it again. Yeah, most likely second place is gone.'
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Mark Chisnell reports - 'Telefonica Blue is indeed out of the water. I’d say they’ve got plenty on to make the start of Leg 10, never mind the In-Port Race in Stockholm. But we won’t really know the deal until the structural engineers take a look at it, and that could take a few hours to do properly, as they will probably want to test it with ultrasound.'
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