Commanding Lead For Telefonica Blue

Telefónica Blue, with Bouwe Bekking/NED and his men, has emerged from the aftermath of yesterday’s carnage, unscathed, other than breaking their wind instruments, and now has a commanding lead.

Bekking was directing operations yesterday from his bunk, with an injury to a muscle in his back, and paid tribute to his two watch captains, Jordi Calafat/ESP and South Africa’s Jonathan Swain. 

“They all worked as great team in the last 36 hours.  The only thing I could do was be was awake and give my input and advice, which was, above all, ‘BOYS, KEEP IT IN ONE PIECE’. 

The team registered 55 knots of wind, prior to losing their wind instruments, which, navigator Simon Fisher said, meant even looking upwind was nearly impossible with so much spray from the wind.  “The sea looked very white and it was very wet on deck,” he said. 

The team centralised the canting keel, sailed with three reefs in the mainsail and a storm jib set and the rest of the sails were safely stowed below, to ensure that they could sail as slowly as possible, but with enough steerage to avoid big waves.  A professional display of good seamanship without a doubt.  .  “We always new this was going to be a horrible leg,” Bekking said.

Bekking added that being stuck down below in his bunk was the best way to feel how big the crashes were.  He could tell who was steering and when the boat was about to launch off a wave. 

Last night they started to crash the boat too hard, so the team invested some of their lead to sail away from the finish on a better angle to the waves, but now they are back up to full race mode and Bekking is able to move around the boat. 

Telefónica Blue has now safely crossed the Luzon Strait and is sailing 25 miles offshore up the eastern coast of Taiwan, just northeast of Botel Tobago Island.  Ericsson 3 (Magnus Olsson/SWE) is just six miles from the southern tip of Taiwan and Ericsson 4 (Torben Grael/BRA) is 13 miles behind her. 

Elsewhere in the fleet, the three damaged boats are making progress, but Telefónica Black (Fernando Echávarri/ESP) has had to retire.   Mark Chisnell, in his TEN ZULU report, gives a full account of the damage caused yesterday.

Green Dragon (Ian Walker/GBR), PUMA (Ken Read/USA) and Delta Lloyd (Roberto Bérmudez/ESP) have all resumed racing, but are now many miles behind Telefónica Blue.  PUMA has just started out across the Strait, while the others still have some way to go in the lee of Luzon Island.

Telefónica Black has officially retired from this leg.  The boat has a crack in the hull, which is of some concern, and the team is heading towards Manila where they will rendezvous with their shore crew and design team, to assess what needs to be done to get the boat back in shape and ready for the in-port race in Qingdao on 7 February. 

Skipper of Green Dragon, Ian Walker, said today, “We are expecting a tortuous trip, where will have to balance preserving the boat with our makeshift repairs, against getting to Qingdao as quickly as possible.”

Delta Lloyd got going rather quicker than they intended.  Yesterday, they ended up in the Bay of Salomague, which was nicely secluded.  The first thing the crew did was to rest, and, during the night, Green Dragon pulled in to the same bay. 

After sunrise, they tackled their repair list.  Mending the mainsail was by far the biggest job, but David Pella also fixed the steering wheel, which had broken on the outer ring.  The rest of the crew cleaned up the boat.

 “Our goal was to set sail at 1800 hours local time, but, after seeing Green Dragon weighing anchor, the work speed increased even more and we managed to raise anchor at 1710 local time,” said navigator Frits Koek.  The team is currently reporting a high swell left over from yesterday’s storm, but, with just 11.5 knots of wind, it is causing no problems.

Ken Read, whose red and black PUMA, snapped her boom in two yesterday, described the conditions yesterday as worst than those found in the notorious Bass Strait.  “This is the nastiest place on earth he said.” 

For Telefónica Blue, the air temperatures are steadily dropping although the warm current is keeping the sea temperature up.  They have 822 nm to run to the finish are anticipating crossing the finish in Qingdao late on the 28 January/early 29 January.  The stopover in Qingdao will be hard for the teams because it will be short and cold and, as well as an in-port race, they have a big leg ahead of them to prepare for.  Leg five is the longest leg in the history of the race; 12,300 nm to Rio de Janeiro.

Leg Four Day 8: 1300 GMT Volvo Ocean Race Positions