3:04 AM Tue 10 Mar 2009 GMT
Latest news from Telefonica Blue and Ericsson 4 sailing Leg 5 of the Volvo Ocean Race.
TELEF?NICA BLUE LEG FIVE DAY 24 QFB: received 09.03.09 0449 GMT
We are finally in breeze and angles where our handicap doesn't show any more. Downwind.
Its a massive relief to have some pace on again, but it still hurts to look at the scheds at how far behind we are due to the amount of upwind we had to do extremely slowly with our reduced sail inventory and several stops to refine our jury setup.
Long way to go yet though. We are in different breeze from the leaders so have quite a different set of options open to us between here and the second ice gate. Will see what we can do with those.
But hey, don't feel sorry for us. Spare a thought for the poor little fish, all of 50mm long by 8mm across, who got jammed in our paddlewheel (which measures our speed through the water). What would be the odds of being something that small going for a casual swim in the great expanse of the Southern Ocean only to get your head stuck in a whizzing paddlewheel which probably only measures 10mm across moving at 15kts through the water? His life wasn't completely wasted though, David (David Vera/ESP) found him delicious.
We had a near miss with a whale just on sunrise this morning within a minute or so of hoisting our A3 spinnaker. Would have done a lot more damage to each other than the 'fish incident' for sure - and probably not as tasty (or politically correct) for David either. Just like when we were racing through logs and other debris coming into the Malacca Straits in leg three, we are all very relieved that all these obstacles disappear at night time......
Tom Addis - navigator
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TELEF?NICA BLUE LEG FIVE DAY 23 QFB: received 08.03.09 1606 GMT
We had another big rig maintenance day. We were not happy with our so-called forestay arrangement, so it was up and down the rig several times. On the first descent on deck David (David Vera/ESP) came with some bad news. He had discovered a crack in the rig, causing, of course, some extra wrinkles in our foreheads. So we got some good photos taken, so we all could see the extent of the damage.
Not good of course to see this kind of thing, but we saw a way to relax that area a bit more, by adding another temporary stay, this time one facing aft and even that we are concerned about it, but we think we can keep it under control.
So the rig starts slowly looking like the Eiffel Tower, with bits and pieces of rope everywhere to stabilize it fore and aft as good as possible, but we are happy with it.
We have been sailing mainly the entire day with our small jib up, as the seaway is too nasty to put u the big Anaconda (our code 0). It feels horrible to drive in these conditions, the speed down several knots from normal and playing with the keel angle all the time. But we quickly figured out to that hoisting our storm jib inside of the small jib, actually gave us a couple of tenth of speed. It is the old fashion way of settings sails, but since we are going so much slower the apparent wind is coming more from behind, so this little sail is efficient.
Bouwe Bekking - skipper
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ERICSSON 4 LEG FIVE DAY 24 QFB: received 09.03.09 0901 GMT
Two sides of an ocean...
Yes, the Pacific is a big ocean and now we are starting to move along its bottom edge after what seems like an age at sea. The first three weeks have been largely southbound down the west edge of this huge wilderness. We have seen only a few islands, reefs and atolls (some more closely after the jaunt through Fiji), but largely it has been only Pacific, warm, blue sea.
That was then and now is different.
The other side is the where the Pacific meets the Southern Ocean. This is a different place; it is cooler, greyer, windier and even the waves have a lumpier quality. Our progress south east is gathering pace and the weather has become more 'normal' after the set up at the scoring gate. Our friends on Ericsson 3 used this well to their advantage with a carefully thought out punt 'over the top'. This had been lurking as an option since Fiji but old school conservative thinking (south is good) rather tempered our risk assessment. This left us taking a loss, but at least we are in touch with our main rivals overall. Good to see the Ericsson 3 move, a lot more Arsenal than Chelsea so to speak.
After some less than comfortable upwind sailing into the sub tropical low we were treated with some good lightning and ramping head seas as the wind shift allowed us to sail east.
One 20 knot leap by the boat felt like we were fully airborne and after Horatio's (Horatio Carabelli/BRA) checks of the keel rams, a few sheared bolts probably attest to the hull being clear of the water. I know that's what my teeth felt like when we landed.
We have been lucky to reduce our deficit with Puma and saw them cross behind us 2 nm away this afternoon when the visibility lifted briefly from the murk and mist. I expect we will be close to them again before the second ice waypoint.
My mind goes back three years to the last race when I was on Pirates of the Caribbean and we ended up boat for boat with movistar approaching the second ice waypoint. This is an imaginary mark about as far away from land you can get on the planet, which we must pass on the correct side before we can head south to Cape Horn. It is to keep us clear of ice bergs.
Last time, we had the preposterous situation of two boats overlapped at the mark in the middle of nowhere with movistar choosing to gybe set and the Pirates straight setting spinnakers.
A few of the protagonists are the same. Again it is Capey (Andrew Cape - navigator) and I who are fretting about whether we have passed the point correctly. Watch leaders have swapped. Stu Bannatyne is with me this time (and I remind him that his gybe set resulted in a cross to Pirates by 12 miles a few hours later). Capey has the pleasure of the company of Erle Williams who no doubt will be regaling the Pumas with his tales - Erle's 'Continuing Adventures of Flyer' from the old Whitbread days - Justin Ferris must know these off by heart by now.
It will be interesting to see how this duel in Ericsson 3's wake pans out in the next few grey days. It won't be simple and easy that is for sure.
Jules Salter - navigator
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