Sport-heute: Sailing - Hilfe wir kleben!

16. April 2009, 16:12

Hilfe wir kleben!

Kein Wind - wir steuern mit 8 Knoten voraus. Unser Boot liebt das überhaupt nicht. Es klebt regelrecht am Wasser und ist kaum zu steuern. So haben wir unseren Proviant, unser Gepäck und alles das Gewicht hat unten nach vorne gebracht um eine gewissen Stabilität im Wasser zu erhalten. Dies sind 1000 kg inkl. der mitgeführten Ersatzteile.

Brüttisellen, 16.4.09 (mk) DELTA LLOYD LEG SIX DAY 6 QFB: received 16.04.09 0824 GMT

Fernando within reaching distance

‘Eight knots guys, all weight forward.’ When we hear this call on the Team Delta Lloyd boat, we know we are in trouble.. We love our boat dearly, but she doesn’t like it very much when winds drop below the nine knot mark. Her rather big bum is starting to glue to the water, so we have to help her with all means possible to lift her up again.

It means our usual coal mine labour downstairs with dragging the 1000 kg of food, spares, boots and foul weather gear forward. Laboursome for sure, but worth it, because the reward is a precious few tenths more boat speed. We are in desperate need of this to cross the light wind patch of the east tip of Brazil near Recife. To the north stronger winds are awaiting us, and get to these first and you can make a jump on the fleet.

The rubber band effect as usual is doing its job too. Yesterday afternoon we could see both Telefónica Blue and Telefónica Black behind us as the fleet got compressed. A painful six hours and we were out, but not fully undamaged. Ericsson 4 did well out of it all. We need to work even more on our light wind pace, especially as we know this is were our lady’s weak point lies.

Since the light patch we have been making our planned move west to set up for more lifted winds later today. Now we have found our friends (but mostly rivals) on Ericsson 4, and are charging along side by side towards the scoring gate. Two hundred nm to go and the battle for second place is all on. Two sisters fighting it out mile by mile, every tenth of a knot of boat speed is counting. The younger sister might have a nice set of wheels, but the older sister is well tuned with more than a full lap around the planet behind her. The trimming on Team Delta Lloyd is non-stop as we are trying to squeeze everything out of the old Lady. It will be an exciting day to Fernando the Noronha; she is truly within reaching distance. Looking forward to crossing the gate!

Wouter Verbraak - navigator

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TELEFÓNICA BLACK LEG SIX DAY SIX QFB: received 16.04.09 0136 GMT

Five boats have a real ‘drag race’ on for the last 340 nm to Noronha. Telefónica Blue can watch the action behind her as she has sailed excellently and should make the scoring gate first, no problem. She has stretched her lead and probably there are no more passing lanes are available.

The South East trades are expected to be more steady than they were today which also will make it difficult for Green Dragon to catch up with the pack of five in the middle. Leading this group now is Ericsson 4 and knowing her impressive reaching speed, she will be hard to pass even if there is only 10 nm from her to Ericsson 3 with Delta Lloyd, Puma and us in between.

Looking out in the darkness of the crystal clear tropical night, we can see Delta's white stern light, a bit ahead on our starboard side and the green navigation lights of Puma and Ericsson 3 on our port beam. In which order will we arrive to this fairly unknown island Fernando de Noronha? The day after tomorrow you will know...

All well onboard the Black boat except a small charging problem which David Vera seems to have fixed by making better ventilation for the over-heated regulator. I guess we all feel a bit overheated, both when it comes to below deck temperature but also from the heat of the fight against our nearest competition, Puma, Delta and Ericsson 3.Speed, speed and more speed is what we all are looking for right now...

Yours
Roger Nilson - navigator

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TELEFÓNICA BLUE LEG SIX DAY 5 QFB: received 15.04.09 2200 GMT

Can’t sleep, so will write few lines and to let you all know how we are doing.

Still in the lead, but the conditions are very tricky, and I know everything can happen. Strangely enough we are in the same position as in the previous race, where the same boat is chasing us. Then we knew we had a bit on, as the ABN boat was more than 1.5 knots faster on a close reach. We beat them by only two or three minutes to the scoring gate.

At least that is not the case anymore. When we have similar pressure we should be able to hold off Delta Lloyd, but as said big losses/gains can be made very easily, so it not over until we are there and we cannot relax a single minute.

All the boats are still in striking distance and an upset can easy happen in this part of the world. Is it fair that we get the same amount of points as the for example the 6.4 mile inshore race in Rio. I guess so, as that is the rule. But I hope the organisation will review this for the next edition. The in-port races are great for the stopover organisers and the sponsors, but I would like to see only points for the first three boats. The winner of the days gets 1.75 points, 2nd place 1 point and 3rd place 0.5 points. The rest of the fleet don’t get any points. I think this concept shows that this is an offshore race, and easy to understand for the public. They an even understand that the winner gets a very small bonus of .25 points for their great form of the day.

So all well here, everybody gets a nice tan, but as Xabi (Xabier Fernandez) noted Sifi (Simon Fisher) starts looking like a real ‘pom’. Red face, and a white upper body, with red arms. I think he got the message; tomorrow his shirt will be off, so he gets a more even colour.

Cheers.

Bouwe Bekking - skipper

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