Big day at the office

The drama has carried on through the past 24 hours. Movistar (Bouwe Bekking) has managed to limp through the scoring gate at Cape Horn as the other yachts make their way north again. After the windy rounding, the teams were becalmed in huge seaway as they battled up past Staten Island. They are currently sailing in around 16 knots of wind towards The Falkland Islands, setting up to leave them to their port side on the way to Rio de Janeiro.

After a day none of the movistar crew will forget, life is becoming more stable again. The yacht suspended racing at 1338 GMT today and has begun motoring into the Canal Beagle on the way to Ushuaia to the west. They have 52 nautical miles to go at their current speed of 8 knots making the ETA 2230 GMT tonight but the area has been battered in very windy conditions which may slow their progress.

Bouwe reported earlier on how the clean up operation was going, “It is amazing it was such a big mess and cleaning up still goes on. We winds ranging from 40-50 knots all day, luckily from behind, but some monster waves have built up, and because we are only doing 10 knots, they very often they break over the boat.

“We have got the generator running again, (which was totally submerged) but we are having problems with charging since the alternators were totally submerged as well.  Chris (Nicholson) has been trying to inject them with oil to get the water out of them, but he is still not happy with the results he is getting. The first time we fired (connected) them in a couple of seconds the boat was filled with smoke, but this got better and better.  We have had some small electrical fires onboard, all little things, mainly motors of small bilge pumps which have given up. But it is, in my opinion, amazing that the electronics have survived so well.

“We haven't been able to get the water maker going either, so we are using our emergency water (50 litres) for the time being. When the conditions are more quiet, Chris is going to take it apart, and if we have no luck, then the last option is to install the complete spare unit, which we always bring with us.”

As the fleet moved up north, past the Staten Island to the east of Argentina, everyone but Brasil 1 (Torben Grael) left the island to the port of them. Brasil 1, which was in third place at the time, opted to dodge in between Argentina and Staten Island, going through the Le Maire Strait. This plan had paid off by 1000 GMT today, moving them up in to second becoming the most northerly of all the fleet, but unfortunately for them the past six hours have not been so kind and the Pirates (Paul Cayard) passed them again at 1300 GMT. They are currently only 22 nautical miles to the south west of The Black Pearl.

The Brazilians are undoubtedly very happy today as they head home in a good position, but they do have a little problem onboard which Horacio Carabelli explained yesterday, “We have been dealing with a leakage of the starboard ram during the last days; today we decided to get into the emergency oil to fit our hydraulic system. Our plan is to manage until Rio without having to change the ram for the spare one we carry. To do this we need better conditions needing to bring the keel to the centre.  The weather indicates that light wind is expected after a few days from rounding Cape Horn and all going well we can do the job at this point. This has not compromised our performance and safety as the leakage is under control and we just need to re-pump our keel every 4 hours to recover a drop of one degree.”

Ericsson Racing Team (Neal McDonald) has been hot on the tails of the young guns on ABN AMRO TWO (Sebastien Josse) in fourth and have been catching up fast. They have reduced the boys lead on them by 49 nautical miles in the past 48 hours and both boats have concertinaed up behind the top three teams. Steve Hayles describes the crew’s big day at the office, beginning at first light yesterday as they approached Cape Horn and hoisted their big spinnaker.

“We took off down the first wave with such pace that you would swear blind that we were being propelled by something infinitely more powerful than the wind.  Tim Powell was driving and in these conditions he is hard to beat; I have sailed around the world with him three times already and shared some very hairy moments.  Nothing normally fazes him, but a look at his face made it clear that this was no walk in the park. 

“We pushed hard; slowly you get more at ease with the situation as you find the edge of control and you start to enjoy the ride of your life.  It's an amazing sight looking upwind at the shear size of the waves behind you and the wake of the boat that seems to go all the way to the horizon.  One moment you can see nothing but sky behind the helmsman and the next there is a wave at five times his height building behind you.  The boat picks up her heels and takes off like a thing possessed. The dodgy bit is when you get to the bottom of the wave; every tenth wave or so you bury the bow in hard and a huge solid wall of water rips along the boat at 35 knots; it hits you hard enough to take your breath away just whilst you need to be trimming or grinding.

“Finally, about 120 miles short of the Horn itself the sea state was so unfriendly that Neal called it a day; and it turned out to be a very good decision.  As we closed on the Horn, the breeze built beyond the forecast and soon we were sailing in monumental waves and with the wind speed climbing towards 50 knots, any fun was over. Down below you get used to being thrown around, but this was bloody ridiculous. You could barely move around without being violently upended and dumped in the leeward bilge!

“Then it went very light for a while nearer the land and our offshore course, although giving us an uncomfortable and stressful few hours, was also going to allow us to stay in the breeze longer.

“Just as we started enjoying the flat water, another minor drama reared its head. The motion had been so violent that one side of the battery bank had broken free. The cells are housed in a watertight compartment made of Kevlar but, unknown to us, the terminals on the battery were now shorting on some carbon structure inside the box and were starting a resin fire.  

“Jason, Bagi (Magus Woxen) and I set about opening the battery compartment which was so well sealed that it took 20 minutes to prize it apart.  We were getting electrical shocks from everything and there were was now acrid smoke being produced.  We got inside and found the problem quickly; 140 kilos of batteries had broken free and were now lying with their terminals on the carbon structure.  There were more smoke and flames were starting to show. We quickly levered the whole bank away from the carbon and the immediate problem was solved.

“Slowly and surely we stripped down the battery bank and lashed each cell in place before wiring it all back up.  It was inconvenient for everyone else and a problem for our performance, as everything had to be shut down including our compasses and instrumentation. Finally we got everything back together and slowly starting getting all the systems running; everything seems fine and we are now back on track.

“Its been an epic 48 hours that will linger long in the memory;  for now though it’s back to business as normal as we set about getting into the boats ahead.  I look forward to some conditions that suit Ericsson a little more and being able to shout from the hatch that 'we’re on fire' and not mean it literally!”

The crew of Brasil 1 have stepped on the gas to move into second place, some 13 miles behind leader ABN AMRO ONE as the distance separating first and fifth-placed boats squeezes to less than 60 miles.

Torben Grael, rounding Cape Horn for the first time and his navigator Marcel Van Triest, a veteran who was rounding it for the sixth time pooled their instincts and experiences to choose their quickest route towards the Falkland Islands but unlike the rest of the fleet, they plumped for the Le Maire Strait, passing through the waters between the southern tip of Argentina and Staten Island.

They were the only ones to take the gamble but it paid off as the northerly track proved the fastest and Brasil 1 passed by Paul Cayard’s Pirates of the Caribbean, some 50 miles to the south.

movistar, which is heading to Ushuaia for repairs following their near sinking yesterday, was the last competitor to round the Horn. The fleet is now sprinting towards the Falkland Islands at average speeds of around 20 knots.

How quickly things can go wrong...

Events of the last 24 hours, when Bouwe Bekking radioed race HQ with the devastating news that movistar was sinking, have served as a stark reminder to the crews how life at the extreme can pose a serious threat to one’s health.

Said Steve Hayles: “This came as a very forceful reminder of exactly what part of the world we were in and how quickly things can go wrong.

“I sent a text message (to movistar) with no response so decided there was nothing to worry about at this stage and maybe their electrical systems were down. I then tried telephoning them and amazingly the phone rang and Capey picked it up.

“For a split second, the bizarre nature of the situation struck me. Here I am in my nav station (which looks a lot like Capey's nav station) talking to a guy who's boat is filling up with water hundreds of miles from one of the most treacherous and notorious headlands in the world!

“I know Capey fairly well, and like him a lot. You'd go a long way to find anyone more laid back than him, but you could tell he'd had a scare. We talked for maybe 60 seconds and established that they were able to keep up with the water ingress and that we were completely at their disposal. There's not much else to say so we ended the conversation there, a little more relieved that the situation was not quite as urgent as it might have been.”

To read the rest of Steve Hayles' email and more from the rest of the fleet, click the Latest Multimedia button in the left menu


POSITION REPORT 2200GMT

Massive seas and patches of no wind, a deadly combination, were lurking in wait for the Volvo Ocean fleet as they rounded the mysterious land mark, Cape Horn.

Pirates of the Caribbean (Paul Cayard) passed Cape Horn in 33 knots of wind and now, just 47 miles east, they have just five knots of wind, but a huge seaway. “At least we are headed directly where we want to go: La Maire Strait, which is the water between the very bottom of Argentina and Staten Island,” wrote Cayard tonight. Leading yacht, ABN AMRO ONE (Mike Sanderson), is in the same situation, but worse, only managing two knots in 4 knots of wind. The best wind is offshore and Cayard and his band of Pirates may well change their game plan once they become aware of this.