10:51 AM Sun 23 Nov 2008 GMT
Onboard, for the Volvo fleet things generally seem to by drying out and the crews are spending time fixing things on their boats. Read the latest blogs from the boats.
GREEN DRAGON LEG TWO DAY 9 QFB: received 23.11.08 0611 GMT
We have had plenty on lately. You may have heard but we had a witching hour where something would happen almost same time every day.
One particular day was a real bummer. I had just got on deck when Damien called to me as we were taking in a lot of water through the glue joining the port dagger board. Damien Foxall (IRL) was holding it shut as best he could, while I got into the back of the boat to retrieve the boat-building kit as we planned to through bolt it.
As if we didn't have enough on while I was in the back of the boat , I felt Neal McDonald/GBR get a bit on and all of a sudden a big bang and the steering sheave box that prevents you from Chinese gybing had come clean off. This put a dampener on thing to say the least.
After assessing the damage, I decided to concentrate on stopping the leak first with Damien as the boys were steering ok with the leeward wheel. This repair as you would have seen, involved a lot of water and sicker (Sikaflex).
Next was the steering sheave, I am lucky to have onboard guys like Damien and Neal as they are smart blokes, who have spent plenty of time dreaming up on the fixes, which is a big part of any offshore race. We decided the best way would be to bang a hole through to side of the boat, a bit unorthodox but effective for sure.
I drilled a series of pilot holes through the inside skin then chiselled out the remainder skin, we then chiselled out the outside skin, got a file, cleaned up the hole (not too bad either for a railway fitter). We had a French fitting called a Pad Limit, which was perfect; this was to be sickered in place from the outside with the strop going into the boat to hang the block off.
Easy. The boys fed the strop through, lots of sicker everywhere, and we were almost finished. I grabbed the block, turned around, and no strop, it had been washed away. This put me fully into the wall. I was now feeling pretty grumpy. Managed to get a dog bone to do the same job though and it has stayed fully waterproof.
Other than the usual cleaning out of bilge pump filters and messing with the water maker, which has been a real pain and used up a lot of my time, I think I found the problem today, and am hoping it will be back to normal operation.
We now have the challenge of repairing the boom, I am pretty excited about tackling this one and am waiting for Ian (Ian Walker/GBR) to give me the go ahead as we have put it to one side and are just concentrating on making the boat go fast, at the moment it is not affecting us.
With discussions with Neal and Andy (Andy Merrington/AUS). we have come up with a good plan and, as with all these repairs, they are done in less than perfect environments and there is no guarantee it will hold up to what we will ask of it. It will be a combination of mainsail battens, glue and carbon and anything else I can fined to chuck at it and will look ugly, but if it holds, I will be stoked.
Sometimes having my role on board is great when it is cold and you are working on the engine in the warm, but it also is a bit frustrating as you would like to get up there and do some sailing and enjoy the watch with the boys. You feel like every time you get on top of one thing, another will be waiting, and most times it is just about prioritising the repairs.
Tom Braidwood
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TEAM RUSSIA LEG TWO DAY 9 QFB: received 23.11.08 0126 GMT
We had a very unlucky incident last night catching a rope in the port rudder, not a piece of string, but seven metres of heavy arm-thick stuff that stalled the rudder and slowed down. It took some time to get rid of it and ruined our sched. Having a catch in an area with lots of shipping is one thing, but in the middle of the Indian Ocean, where we haven't seen a ship for the last week is like one in a million.
Everyone on board really enjoyed yesterday's warmer and drier weather after being cold and wet for almost a week. Everything went on deck to dry out; less moisture is less weight, which will help, in the light stuff ahead.
On this leg our technical issues seem to be dominated by electrics....after getting electrocuted when touching anything in the navstation, its now the SSB not wanting to get switched off, no matter what you do unless you cut the main power supply to the amplifier. Why the SSB? Because all the Anglo Saxons on board got very nervous about some Rugby yesterday and there was hope that BBC world service would broadcast it.
Andreas Hanakamp - skipper
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DELTA LLOYD LEG TWO DAY 8 QFB: received 22.11.08 1912 GMT
Our first warm and sunny day of Leg 2. It was a great day for drying out our clothes, and cleaning out the boat. The wind and waves were calm and I think that we will all sleep well on our off watches today.
We've done several sail changes to keep up with a rapidly changing wind direction. Over the course of the day, the wind shifted 180 degrees around to the east. We are now sailing with our Fractional Zero headsail again. This sail has seen a lot of hours on leg 2. We love this sail. It's fantastically versatile. We are looking forward to the trade winds and some warm weather.
Ryan Houston - watch captain.
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ERICSSON 4 LEG TWO DAY 8 QFB: received 22.11.08 1003 GMT
The pace of life has slowed dramatically over the last 24hrs on Ericsson 4. We gybed early this morning as we approached the start of the wind transition area, which will ultimately get us into the SE trades and on our way.
It's been time for drying out and a repair to one of the helmsman's foot chocks that broke a couple of days ago. Dave Endean/NZL and his faithful side kick Phil ' Blood' Jameson/NZL set about it with drills and grinders and we are now waiting for the epoxy to kick before reinstalling it.
It was weird to see Blood wearing 2 gloves (during the repair) for a change as he has been getting called 'Michael Jackson' onboard due to his recent habit of wearing one glove - the reason? - because of some nasty splits he had developed on his hand due to the constant damp conditions. The deep splits resembled small open mouths at the base of his fingers and looked pretty painful, but this didn't stop the joking about. The small tears took on a new meaning to the recent street saying 'Speak to the hand as the face ain't listening' as Ryan thought that Blood's hand could talk back and if you asked the hand a question it would actually answer back - albeit in Ryan's high pitched Monty Python style woman's voice.
Unfortunately for Ryan, but lucky for Blood, the splits are healing nicely - so we only have the Michael Jackson references and no matter how many times any of us do any high pitched 'hee hee's', ask for a 'moon walk' or say 'chamone' (in true Jackson style) Blood refuses to put on a 'self professed messiah - misfit' show for us, which is a shame as I can just see Blood trying to moon walk in all his gear including his blue gardening glove.
On a more serious note, Dave Endean/NZL threw our serving spoon overboard last night - although he can't really be blamed, as it was I who didn't take it out of the pot before asking him to empty the left over food in the ocean. (Tried thinking of a good spoonerism to put in that statement - but couldn't see one!)
We have a constant high-pitched wail coming from the rudders and it is slowly driving us all insane (I think testament to that is above!) - so in some way losing the spoon was a good move as it is one less weapon to be used onboard when one of us finally does snap due to the aural torture.
Guy Salter - MCM
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ERICSSON 3 LEG TWO DAY 8 QFB: received 22.11.08 1118 GMT
We are now sailing in 10 knots of wind and almost flat water and it's a golden opportunity to fix everything that needs to be fixed. Everyone is moving around like hard working ants.
Martin KriteSWE and Martin Str?mberg/SWE are repairing the main, Anders Dahlsj?/SWE is putting some carbon on the radar cover and Mange (Magnus Olsson/SWE)and Jens Dolmer/DEN have taken the task to try and repair the radar, not very easy, I can tell you that.
Mange thinks they have a 20 percent chance of making it work. So far, they have been working on it for six hours. The first time they tried to put the electricity on, we heard a big bang. Next time smoke started come out of it. But, they are not giving up, even though the odds are probably even higher than they were at the start.
The wind has dropped and the heat has arrived. It's amazing how fast the change from full wet weather gear, fleece and boots went to only shorts.
We have very nice sailing conditions but even so, it's been a frustrating 24 hours for us. The entire fleet has made big gains on us and Ericsson 4 has passed us on their more easterly route. It did not get better when we had to stop to remove a big bag which got stuck on the keel.
On the plus side, we realised very quickly that something was wrong and went to have a look in the endoscope, to find a big bag wrapped around the fin. In just a few minutes, we had stopped the boat, sailed backwards for a couple of meters, got rid of the bag ad then started sailing again. We have definitely improved since the same thing happened on the first leg.
On the last sched, we had gained on Ericsson 4 and Green Dragon. But they have a better angle than us and we have to fight hard to stay in the top.
For the moment we are aiming on reaching the tradewinds as soon as possible and getting a good angle into the Doldrums. After the Doldrums we are expecting a good westerly breeze and as we get closer to India the wind will probably drop.
During this pretty calm moment we are also trying to spend some quality-time in our bunks, regaining some of the sleep we have missed out of the last couple of days.
Gustav Morin - MCM
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TELEF?NICA BLACK LEG TWO DAY 8 QFB: received 22.11.08 1208 GMT
Hi
At last, we are having time to fix things properly and put everything to get dry. The wind has dropped and the sun is nice now, so we have tidied the whole inside, without forgetting we are still racing. But there are so many little things to fix that they take a lot of time!
Last night was really different from those previous ones, as it really stopped being cold and you could enjoy navigation and a canopy of stars. Things are not going very well in this part of the leg, but there is a lot more to go and we are all confident things will change. But everyone on TELEF?NICA NEGRO is really enjoying every minute of this race, even when things are difficult, we behave as a great bunch of sailors and friends!
Now we are making another of the endless changes of sails. We try everything, and we keep on trying to do our best, although we are conscious it is not enough, but anyway we fight for it. As far as the pirates, we do not really think much of it, we the next two legs consider much more dangerous; anything might
happen, so now we just have fun.
We will be soon immersed into the Indian Ocean tradewinds and then into the doldrums, which you may remember as those nights keeping watch over massive rainclouds and squalls on the radar, with little or no wind, and we are all anxious to experiment how they are in this part of the world, as there is very little evidence or previous experience.
Anyway, the BLACKIES are still alive!
Mikel Pasabant - MCM
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by Various Volvo Ocean Race competitors
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