7:13 AM Fri 6 Mar 2009 GMT
Telefonica Blue suffered a cruel blow last night when the Spanish boat broke its forestay while leading the fleet through the Southern Ocean on day 20 of the marathon Leg 5 from Qingdao to Rio.
Skipper Bouwe Bekking notified Volvo Ocean Race headquarters of their mishap at 17:40 GMT. The crew has put in place a jury rig and has decided to carry on under reduced sail.
In an email sent from the boat at 22:48 GMT, Bekking graphically described the incident and underlined the team's desire to continue.
'We were ripping along, making great speeds in 15 knots of breeze, when all of sudden a loud bang was heard from the rig. My first instinct was to look up but I saw that the mast was still in one piece. A fraction later, the headsail dropped in the water,' he wrote.
'Forestay broken. It was around 06:30 (17:30 GMT) in the morning, Jono (Swain) was driving and his quick reaction to bear away saved the rig. We put some halyards on the bow, to stabilize the rig, as it was sweeping like a spaghetti pole.
'First thing was to get the big jib out of the water, which was a huge effort as it was filled with thousands of litres of water. Then we had to get the sail out of the headfoil, which is a carbon fibre piece which slots over the actual forestay. We were running dead downwind and worked on a system to use the stay again, so at least we had something to jury rig the mast.
'We did a rig check and all seemed to be all right. I had been on the phone with our shore manager to go over eventual scenarios, regarding spare pieces. By then I knew that the actual forestay hanger was broken, this is a 30 mm stainless steel piece, and it had snapped right through the middle.'
Having fully assessed the damage and made good the temporary repair, Bekking confirmed that they had weighed up their options on whether to head back to New Zealand or carry on.
Ultimately, the unfavourable weather models ruled out making landfall in New Zealand. 'The weather slot would have been a bad option time-wise, so we decided to carry on,' Bekking said.
'Let's hope we get some downwind sailing, as there shouldn't be any problems with that. But tight reaching and upwind will be slow, as we only can hoist a small jib on separate stay and of course we don't want to sacrifice the mast in any way.
'Everybody is disappointed, but we all have the same fighting spirit. We started well behind, and actually became first on the leaderboard yesterday, a huge reward for 21 days of working extremely hard. Of course this is a setback, but there is still a long way to go. We will not give up.'
A final decision on the next course of action will not be made until further consultation with the support team. That is likely to be around 10:00 GMT tomorrow morning.
It is a debilitating blow for a Telefonica Blue team which began this leg some 19 hours behind the main pack after striking a rock in the pre-start in Qingdao Harbour.
It is the second setback in 24 hours for the Blue boat. Earlier in the day Bekking reported that they had suffered delamination of the mainsail.
Owing to Telefonica Blue's misfortune, the rest of the fleet had gained ground by the 22:00 GMT Position Report. Bekking and his men were still the nominal leaders but the gap to second-placed PUMA had narrowed to 21 miles. Ericsson 4 was at +41 and Green Dragon +94.
Ericsson 3, meanwhile was continuing to plough a lonely furrow to the north-east in the hope of hooking onto with the low pressure system to the first ice gate located south-east of New Zealand at 47 degrees south between the longitudes of 155 west and 140 west. The Nordics were 128 miles adrift - on the leaderboard at least.
www.volvooceanrace.org
by Volvo Ocean Race media
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