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Groupama3 – A big cracking sound!
Virtual Eye
Peter Lester
Louis Vuitton – Semi final round
SailJuice spoke to Mike Drummond
Rob Hielkema – update
Talisker® sponsor Bounty Boat
Synergy on the cusp of a semi-final place in Nice
St Barths Bucket 2009
Enjoy
30 Days at Sea
It doesn’t look like we’ll make the equator tomorrow as I’d hoped, but with only about 240nm to go, so it won’t be long now. I’ll keep you updated as we get closer. Getting pretty excited!
After crossing the line I’ll be sailing north another 200nm up around Kiribati Island, my rounding point in the northern hemisphere, then south back across the line and on to Cape Horn.
That’s it from Ella’s Pink Lady, Silly and myself for tonight. Below is a pic of EPL doing well today.
Jesse
The Canaries Tourism office has started a world wide campaign to support and sponsor the Islas Canarias RC 44 sailing team on their Sea Dubai RC44 Gold Cup regatta that starts next week, November 25.
In addition to sponsoring the team and under the motto “Wind To Win”, the Canaries Tourism office invites sailing enthusiasts to support their favorite team and prove that they who have the best fans, have the best wind.
Just by playing on www.windtowin.com and registering (it takes 30 seconds) you could be eligible to win a free trip with the Islas Canarias Sailing team to one of their international races in 2010. The winner of the game will be announced on the 28th of November.
Groupama – a big cracking sound!
Jules Verne Trophy 2009 – 2010
Since Monday afternoon and the damage suffered to the section joining the aft beam and the port float, the crew of Groupama 3 have submitted, but they’re certainly not giving up. On the run barepoled in big seas, southbound, Franck and his men are attempting to preserve the structural integrity of the maxi trimaran by limiting the amount of impact. Inside the damaged float, Lionel Lemonchois and Thomas Coville are dressing the wound. They have a single aim right now, that of heading eastward towards South Africa.
1,760 miles (3,100 kms) ahead of her bows, land is still a long way off but the men are close: “The crew, always highly professional, have once again handled the situation impeccably, without a hint of defeatism or slackening, racking their brains to get out of this faux pas as soon as possible” wrote the skipper of Groupama 3 early this morning.
Whilst Stan Honey and Franck are at the chart table refining the strategy with Sylvain Mondon for avoiding the worst of the gales sweeping across the Southern Atlantic, the other crew members are busy working in the bowels of the float.
Guided by the boat captain, Loïc Le Mignon, who knows Groupama 3 inside out, Lionel Lemonchois and Thomas Coville are covering the faulty bulkhead with a carbon splint. “Will it hold as far as Cape Town?” asks Loïc. And Lionel replies “Ideally, it should hold as far as Brest, but there’s no guarantees as far as that’s concerned”.
On their faces, you don’t have to be an expert to read the disappointment and frustration: “It’s a pain in the arse…” says Fred Le Peutrec simply, whils Bruno Jeanjean adds “It’s massively frustrating; our thoughts go to everyone working on the project”.
At 0500 UT this morning, under reduced sail area, Groupama 3 was making headway at eleven knots, heading 118.
At around 1200 UT this Monday, a big cracking sound dashed the hopes of Franck Cammas and his nine crew in their bid to break Orange 2′s round the world record from back in 2005 (50 d 16h 20′). A bulkhead attached to the aft beam simply gave up the ghost in the harsh conditions as the giant trimaran was sailing with her sails angled at 90° to the true wind in a powerful NNE’ly air flow and rough seas. The crew knew they had to go fast to stay in the right sector of the warm front, hot on their heels, in order to drop down towards the Cape of Good Hope with the Brazilian low. The resulting weakness then caused the windward float to fissure and, in light of the sizeable damage, the crew immediately stopped the boat and concluded that it would be necessary to abandon this round the world attempt.
“We’d spent the night sailing fast to stay ahead of the front and this morning Thomas Coville and Bruno Jeanjean were on deck when they heard a big `crack’: there was a small fissure between the aft beam and the port float. Conditions were really bouncy: we came to a standstill with the wind right on our tail so as to be able to open the hatch and get down inside the float. Part of the section between the beam and the float level with the bulkhead had become detached. As such the structural integrity was reduced by at least half. It is impossible to envisage effecting repairs at sea due to the motion. At the moment we’re still being shaken about: there was 35 knots of wind on the beam at the moment the incident occurred and just now, we’ve been caught up by the front so we’ve got 40 knots of breeze…
We’ve dumped the mainsail and Groupama 3 is running before the wind to avoid any harsh motion. We’re going to draw up a route to avoid having too much wind and excessive waves. We’re heading South to let the second low pass by us tonight and then we’ll head off towards Cape Town tomorrow morning, Tuesday. We’re continuing with the same watch system and I’m working with Stan to see what we can do next. The idea then is to get back to France as quickly as possible: the crew’s up for that and if we can set off again before the end of January then it’s still feasible to make a new attempt!” indicated Franck Cammas during a telephone link-up early this afternoon.
Virtual Eye – The only way to watch the Louis Vuitton Trophy, Nice.
If you’re going to put on a yacht racing regatta in Nice in November with less than 6 months notice to the public, you need a way to let people watch. Monohulls miles offshore sailing in little or no wind and an air temperature of 9-12 degrees celcius means that only the most hard-core race fan is going to be watching the action on the water.
The Louis Vuitton Trophy is giving race fans sitting in the warmth of their offices with an internet connection a way of watching and hearing the action. While the addition of radio commentary to any feed adds incredible depth to the coverage, the Louis Vuitton Trophy is also utilising the 3D animations provided by Virtual Eye.
Semi final pairings set at Louis Vuitton Trophy Nice Côte d’Azur
Emirates Team New Zealand bowman Jeremy Lomas works as the bow digs into a wave.
© Photo Credit Paul Todd/outsideimages.co.nz | Louis Vuitton Trophy, Nice Côte d’Azur.
The leaderboard undergoes a shake-up after today’s match is cancelled
Emirates Team New Zealand has selected Synergy Russia Sailing Team to race in the semi final round of the Louis Vuitton Trophy Nice Côte d’Azur.Team New Zealand and skipper Dean Barker were the best team in the rounds robin, posting a 9-1 record in 10 starts. They consistently won in the pre-start and had flawless crew work around the racecourse.
“We’re a consistent team because we’ve been together so long as a group. That helps us through the tough times,” said Barker, the winning skipper of the 2007 Louis Vuitton Cup. The Kiwis, however, picked the hottest team at the regatta. Synergy, led by Polish skipper Karol Jablonski, enters the match on a five-race winning streak and has polished its game since starting the regatta at 0-3.
“It’s hard when you get to this stage of the regatta. All the teams are strong,” Barker said. “They won’t be an easy opponent and if we don’t sail well they’ll beat us.”
The second semi final match has TeamOrigin from Great Britain racing Azzurra of Italy. Azzurra skipper Francesco Bruni led his crew to a 1 minute defeat of Ben Ainslie and TeamOrigin in the first round. The first crew to score 2 points will be the winner of each match. Concurrent to the semi finals is knockout racing for 5th through 8th place. BMW Oracle Racing takes on TFS – PagesJaunes in one match and Artemis races All4One in the other. Both matches are one race with the winners advancing to determine 5th and 6th, while the vanquished sail a one race match for 7th and 8th.
Tomorrow is an off day and racing is scheduled to resume Thursday, 19 November.
Last night’s hurricane-strength winds gave way to a gentle breeze and warm sunshine today, a blessed relief for the crew of California, in particular, who arrived just after 7am from their temporary overnight berth to join the rest of the yachts in the marina at Royal Cape Yacht Club.
The narrow pontoons at the club have been busier than the M25 today as crews victualled their boats in preparation for the three week race across the Southern Ocean to Western Australia.
Using one of RCYC’s large function rooms, tins of stew, corned beef, sweet corn, custard and vegetables joined cash & carry-sized boxes of Kit Kats, Mars and Snickers. An army of crew unloaded their purchases before setting about marking every single tin with a description of its contents. In wet conditions, the labels have a habit of detaching themselves and then it becomes a game of roulette in discovering whether it will be soya mince stew or baked beans for lunch.
Once marked, many of the boats adopt a day pack policy and a selection of food is made up and then carefully stowed on board. In the big swells of the Southern Ocean, it’s far easier for the mother watch to go to one source for the day’s meals and the menu will provide a variety of easy options when the galley turns itself into a bucking bronco.
Hugo Boss will retire
After hitting an unidentified object in the water yesterday afternoon, Alex Thomson and Ross Daniel have confirmed they will head for the Azores and retire from the Transat Jacques Vabre.
At approximately 1820 GMT on Sunday (15/11/09) Hugo Boss crew Alex Thomson and Ross Daniel, reported a collision with an unidentified object in the water. They were was lying in 4th place in the Transat Jacques Vabre race from Le Havre to Costa Rica when the damage was sustained and it was reported that they were taking on water. A pump worked overnight and the crew confirmed that they were managing the ingress of water.
On inspection in daylight this morning (16/11/09) skipper Alex confirmed the damage is located on the starboard bow about four metres back and although fairly localised it is allowing a fair amount of water in the boat. The skippers are discussing the damage with their shore team to finalise a temporary fix which will allow them to make for the nearest land which is The Azores. Although the damage is small it will not be possible to stop the water until the area is free from water, something not possible in the ocean. Regrettably today at 1300 GMT Alex and Ross made the difficult decision to officially retire from the race.
SailJuice
SailJuice spoke to Mike Drummond the morning after the first day of sailing for the wing rig. Here’s the first part of the interview. Click on the link at the bottom to listen to the audio for the meaty, technical stuff …
SailJuice: Mike, you and the team put the wing rig on the trimaran for the first time yesterday. How is it going so far?
Mike Drummond: Well, I would have to say that things are going pretty well because 12 hours from rolling it out of the garage to actually sailing where we were starting to overrun the chase boats. It has exceeded our expectations because there were many steps along the way where things could have gone wrong, but so far it’s working out very well.
SailJuice: You must have your heart in your mouth at times like this, with so much at stake and working with such new and untested technology.
Mike Drummond: It has certainly been heart-in-mouth stuff at some stages. We obviously made the decision a long time ago to do this wing rig. It was recommended on the basis of some theoretical work, but before hardly any design work had been done. So, since then we have mostly been kind of living with that risk that it might not be that fast or that we might have problems we had not foreseen. But you know, you get your head down, you do the work and hopefully it all works out – and that is how it is so far.
Russia’s Synergy on Cusp of Semi-Finals At Louis Vuitton Trophy
©Louis Vuitton Trophy
Louis Vuitton Trophy – Nice 2009
Nice, France
Synergy today won two races yesterday to occupy fourth place on the leaderboard with a 5-4 record, 1 point behind third-placed Azzurra whilst Emirates Team New Zealand scored two wins to wrap up the round robins.
Synergy skipper Karol Jablonski and tactician Rod Dawson were wearing huge smiles dockside and expressing their pleasure over a job well done when Philippe Mourniac from All4One approached.
“Great job, guys. It was awesome to watch on TV,” said Mourniac, the Franco-German team’s navigator.
Synergy had recently completed a wire-to-wire win over TeamOrigin, restructuring the order at the Louis Vuitton Trophy Nice Côte d’Azur as perestroika revamped Russian politics in the 1980s.
Synergy today won two races and now occupies fourth place on the leaderboard with a 5-4 record, 1 point behind third-placed Azzurra. Synergy has two matches remaining in Round 2 and a victory in at least one would ensure advancement to the semi-finals.
At an event such as the Louis Vuitton Trophy, where teams are racing with other people’s multi-million dollar equipment, there is an added responsibility to ensure collisions don’t occur. Not only because breaking other people’s stuff is not polite, but because having one boat out of action could really put the event behind schedule.
“Our game plan here is to do everything we can to avoid collisions,” says Edgerton. “We have this very heavy penalty for contact – the ‘hard contact’ rule. But the thing is just to manage expectations for the teams and that is partly about being very straight and open with them, and also to remind everyone that this is about exhibition as well as about competition. This is about putting racing back in the public eye.”
Collisions are part of match racing, and asking sailors to pull back from tight situations in the heat of battle is easier said than done. So how does Edgerton believe he can rein in the sailors’ competitive instincts? “We actually can’t,” he laughs. “I’m not stupid! You can’t control that but you can temper it and as the event goes on, and the event becomes more competitive towards the semi-finals, we have less of a problem, because as the time on the boat is increased, every hour they spend on the boat means there is less risk of damage because there is so much more learning on board.
“So as time goes on, we can afford to ease up a bit over the course of two weeks because the teams have gone through that learning curve and they understand the situation better and they know how to handle it.”
Whereas it would be easy to think in terms of the umpires as the unsmiling judge and jury of match racing, Edgerton is looking for a more open relationship with the sailing teams. He prefers a more two-way consultative discussion with the teams, which is why he was keen to bring in the observers on to the back of the race boats. “It would be nice to think that all umpiring is just straight black and white – that it is this or it is that. It’s rarely as simple as that. We have observers on the back of the boats now which means we are giving more information to the sailors about we are seeing a situation developing. That is a dialogue that we’re having through radio from the umpires through to the sailors.”
Talisker® sponsor Bounty Boat
Talisker® announces sponsorship of the ‘Mutiny on the Bounty’ recreation expedition as Australian Captain Don McIntyre returns to his roots on Skye Monday 17th November 2009, Isle of Skye, Scotland: Talisker, the famous single malt whisky distilled on the Isle of Skye today announces its sponsorship of an epic sailing adventure which will be the first to recreate the exact journey of Captain William Bligh’s epic 4,000-mile open boat ‘Mutiny on the Bounty ’voyage. Led by Australian adventurer Don McIntyre and a crew of three, the reenactment will follow the journey across the Pacific from Tonga to Timor and aims to raise vital funds and awareness for the world’s first international research centre into Motor Neurone Disease, currently being built by the Sheffield Institute Foundation.
McIntyre returned to his roots and the roots of Talisker on the Isle of Skye to trace his Scottish ancestry, and hold a Clan reunion at the famous Talisker Distillery. His grandparents Thomas and Mary McIntyre emigrated to Australia shortly after their marriage in 1901 and this is Don’s first visit to the island and Scotland. The 54 year-old adventurer, who successfully sailed single-handed around the world in 1992 and has led a series of expeditions down to Antarctica, brought with him the 25ft replica of the Bounty Boat to give his fellow McIntyres an insight into the extraordinary fight for survival that Captain Bligh and his crew faced following the infamous mutiny on HMS Bounty led by Fletcher Christian.
McIntyre and his three-man crew will face the same deprivations as the original Bounty Boat crew, with little food, no charts or toilet paper and only the limited navigation implements that were available to Bligh. They will start the adventure on the same day, at the same time and in the same place 221 years after the original mutiny journey.
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This post is tagged Bounty Boat, Groupama3, Jessica Watson, Louis Vuitton Trophy Nice Côte d’Azur, Mike Dummond, Peter Lester, Rob Hielkema, SailJuice, St Barths Bucket 2009
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