SAILING/VOLVO OCEAN RACE:TO BE fair, while they all knew it would be bad, nobody quite expected the storm to be just as devastating as it became. As local ships and ferries sought refuge, the seven-boat fleet of the Volvo Ocean Race ventured out from the protective shore of the Philippines western coast on Friday and received a nasty lashing for their trouble.
At one point over the weekend, just a single entry was racing hard while the others were either sheltering or licking wounds of varying degrees of severity.
This morning, assuming fresh problems have been averted overnight, five-times race veteran Bouwe Bekking on Spain’s Telefonica Blue will lead the fleet northwards past Taiwan to the final approach and arrival into Qingdao, China.
The wily Dutch skipper combined guile with seamanship and pressed ahead to earn a 60-plus mile lead when the seas calmed.
Astern, the Ericsson twins reaped the reward of playing a cautious hand that started even before the high winds. Last week saw the pair eschew the high-risk strategy of sailing through poor-charted, reef-strewn waters that ultimately cost places at the front of the pack.
With caution in command, the overall race leader Torben Grael on Ericsson 4 plus Magnus Olsen on their stable-mate backed off on the boatspeed to allow the storm abate. Beforehand, however, it was the vicious gale blowing hard against the 1.5 knot current that kicked up steep seas with reportedly standing waves at times that took a heavy toll on the boats that climbed up and fell over the back of such monsters.
In fact, it was American Ken Read’s Il Mostro that fell first when the leg-leader Puma Ocean Racing’s boom snapped in two forcing the Boston entry to run back to shore for shelter and repairs.
Read was gutted as he conceded that his hopes for a win in Leg four were “busted”.
Next up was Ian Walker and the Green Dragon team who followed-up on a broken forestay with a smashed structural fitting in the bow-section just as winds touched storm-force at 50 knots with seas peaking at 14-metres from an average of six to eight metres. However, Walker reported that their makeshift solution failed and they were proceeding under caution.
Then saw the Ger O’Rourke-owned Team Delta Lloyd join the ranks of the injury list when the Dutch/Irish boat suffered a series of breakages and they too headed for an idyllic anchorage for shelter and repairs.
But the three damaged boats have since restarted racing having effected repairs, the most serious of all has been Telefonica Black which has retired completely from the leg after cracks appeared in a hull to deck joint.
Having been holding third-place earlier, Fernando Eschavarri’s crew was last night motoring to Subic Bay near Manila for urgent repairs and a fresh race to be ready for the Qingdao In-Port Race which is less than two weeks away.
