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6:57 AM Wed 19 Nov 2008 GMT
Day four of the second leg of the Volvo Ocean Race and it's getting wet and very wild out there as the fleet have their first real whiff of the Roaring Forties.
Graphic details of spectacular broaches, Chinese gybes, shredded sails and damage to boats and bodies abound.
Widespread sickness has meant involuntary diets for some crew members as the weather gods serve up a menu of 40+ knots and confused, 8-10 metre seas.
The southern ocean has laid on a hostile reception. You can read and hear about it in every single email and soundbyte from the boats.
Speaking of miles, there was still a difference of opinion among the fleet as they jostle for a favourable position either side of a north-south separation on the passage to India.
By the 16:00 GMT Position Report, PUMA heading the northern-most pack lead overall from Telefonica Blue at a Distance to Leader (DTL) of +2 nautical miles. Then came Telefonica Black (+20).
The gang of four in the south is lead by the Ericsson twins - E3 (+9) and E4 (+22), - with a wounded Green Dragon (+37) and Team Russia (+79) riding shotgun. Delta Lloyd (+82), also north, brings up the rear.
And so to the damage reports. The tale of woe on Green Dragon is well aired, Ian Walker reporting that the squall that hit them and broke their boom in two had 50 knots written on it. But there is carnage all around. Shore managers please note.
'The proverbial you-know-what hit the fan.'
In terms of descriptions, nobody does it better than Ken Read on PUMA. He had a lot to describe. After blowing their asymmetric spinnaker into pieces, an hour later the boat took off.
Last night, he said, would have been great if you were a sailmaker or a boatbuilder looking for work.
'Not to sound like I am whingeing, but I think I will anyway,' he began. 'Last night sucked. The proverbial 'you-know-what' hit the fan when we got about as vertical in a sailboat as you ever want to be going down a big dark wave that sort of snuck up on us. And when going straight down a big wave the inevitable bow crash is coming into the wave in front.
'Not only did the bow crash into the wave but the prod, the bow pulpit and about 15 feet up the asymmetric spinnaker we had up at the time. Bang. Spinnaker in many pieces and a long night for Justin Ferris.
'Then, soon after a watch change we found another beauty of a wave. Take off! This one was different than the other 10,872 smashes over the past 48 hours. This one caused several cracks in our longitudinal frames in the bow section.
'And for those laymen out there, these frames are the spine of the boat which don't allow it to fold in half. And they also don't allow the bow to cave in when we hit waves. Kind of important piece to the puzzle.
'I figure it cost us only about 30 miles on the race track. So my whinge is over. Sorry you had to be a part of it. I feel better getting it off of my chest. The competitive side of all of us hates to lose miles.'
'Nothing left to be done but wait for the inevitable'
Onboard Team Russia, the crew suffered their first 'real, heavy, full-on massive flat-out broach'', according to skipper Andreas Hanakamp.
'The boat slowed down almost to a standstill, up to the mast in solid green water,' he said. 'Then, everything went into slow motion. Not a violent knock down, but the boat slowly turning, heeling more and more to wrong side, the boom high up in the air until coming over, and the kite flying around the forestay to the new leeward side and flapping in the 35 knots of breeze.
'Fate was inexorable, nothing left to be done, but wait for the inevitable.'
Cue the rescue squad. Hanakamp climbed the vertical deck to free the runner.; Wouter Verbraak handed him a knife to cut free the lashing; Cam Wills pulled the runner tail with Oleg Zherebtsov grinding it; Jeremy Elliott and Mikey Joubert managed to get the keel moving to the other side to right the boat. Job done.
Elsewhere, Telefonica Blue blew out a spinnaker. And with the crew hampered by sickness due to contaminated water, repairing the damaged sail down below brought unique challenges.
According to skipper Bouwe Bekking, the appointed seamstresses, Daryl Wislang and Jordi Calafat, needed one hand for the spinnaker and the other hand for the bucket collecting the contents of their stomachs. 'Shows how strong a character they have,' Bekking said. Today, the spinnaker was still in bits and will take another 10 hours to fix.
'Forget the champagne sailing'
Finally, from Team Russia's navigator Verbraak comes a warning not to believe everything you read in a glossy holiday brochure .
'I thought this was meant to be a nice sub-tropical leg,' he writes. 'Forget the champagne sailing, the only bubbles we are seeing are on the camera lenses.
'The waves roar over the deck. There is an intense, loud slamming, and hanging on to your bunk whilst trying to catch some sleep. Forget the 80s look with shorts and T-shirts and ray-bans, think survival suits and helmets. Forget a nice foie-grass on toast, think how do I get as many calories as possible in without spilling the whole lot on the ceiling?
'My four year old son keeps dragging us to the Volvo Dome to watch the Volvo movie. He loves the wild music, the pictures of waves exploding into white on the bow. For 10 minutes he doesn't blink and his mouth is wide open in amazement. In the mean time, my wife is holding back tears and grabs my hand tight.
'At the end of the movie, he asks: 'Daddy, you do all this for a trophy? Silly Daddy!' My wife in the mean time is thinking of the sleepless nights she will have when she knows we are pushing the boats down south with no help within days.
'And so, we are completely under water again and conditions are extreme whilst we are blasting east. Back to my bunk for another bumpy ride. We have a tight luff sail up, so less chance of broaching, pitch pooling or other nasty stuff. Phew!'
Extreme indeed.
by Cameron Kelleher
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Busselton Jetty, WA
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