Onderwerp: VOLVO OCEAN RACE

Door een aanvaring met een grote vis is Team Brunel zijn voorsprong kwijtgeraakt. De Nederlandse boot zeilt nu op een vierde plek in de zesde Volvo Ocean Race etappe. Schipper Bouwe Bekking en zijn mannen zeilden al meer dan een dag aan de leiding toen het incident zich voordeed.

“We hoorde in één keer een doffe klap en zagen direct de snelheid teruglopen,” bericht onboard media reporter Stefan Coppers vanaf de boot. “Tevens lukte het haast niet meer om de boot op koers te houden. Na een korte inspectie bleek één van de twee roeren een grote vis gespietst te hebben. Met een reserve zeillat hebben we het beest van het roer afgeduwd. Helaas heeft de vis de aanvaring niet overleefd. Het roer en de boot waren niet beschadigd, zodat we zonder averij onze weg naar Newport konden vervolgen.”

De Volvo Ocean Race vloot vaart nog steeds dicht bij elkaar. De zes teams bepalen hun koers nu vooral aan de hand van de enorme wolkenpartijen die op dit moment boven de Atlantische Ocean hangen. Aan de randen zit meer wind dan het midden van een wolk. Door de aanvaring met de vis heeft Team Brunel ongeveer 5 mijl verloren op de concurrentie.

De vloot wordt rond 6 mei in Newport verwacht. De twaalfde editie van de voormalige Whitbread Round the World Race, omvat negen etappes en één zogenaamde 24-uurs pitstop in Scheveningen. De vloot van de zeven VO65-boten finisht na ongeveer 38.739 zeemijl eind juni in de Zweedse stad Göteborg.

wybeslot schreef :
jaja, de voorsprong kwijt door een vis! Dat hebben we allemaal wel eens.....

Wat een rotsmoes.
De ene nederlander stuurt de boot een eiland op, de andere over een grote vis.....

Comments on Inside Track regarding Dongfeng Race Team
I haven’t watched many of them, but it was a good Inside Track from Volvo Ocean Race yesterday, with good discussion and insight from Craig (Scuttlebutt) and Dawn Riley. But it raised a few questions which need comment. Have a look at it first


Dawn and Jenny made a poor assessment of Charles’ email about fatigue in the fleet – the idea that somehow the Dongfeng crew are the only ones that are getting tired on this marathon event was wide of the mark. Just comes back to us again having an honest and raw communications strategy. If the presence of the OBRs hadn’t taken away the motivation of most of the skippers to share their thoughts, we’d probably be hearing this from the others more too. Ian Walker has openly admitted the same, and you can see it on his face too!

For the Dongfeng sailors, they left Itajai in 100% form, the shore crew totally took up the task. The sailors were totally in their normal routine in the final days, including having had a longer rest than the other crews post Ushuaia.

The other error Dawn and Craig we must correct – Alvimedica are not the young and less experienced ones. The average age of Dongfeng and Alvimedica team on this leg are almost identical at just under 33 years old. Whilst it’s a nice storyline to always call the American team the youngsters, its not actually true…

My own thoughts on Dawn’s comments on SCA are that the differences between the teams are now so small, the level so uniformly high, that it just looks worse than it really is. Sam and the girls have been getting better for sure, but everyone has. I think the gap is in fact very small now – but in this new One Design world – the result of this tiny gap is one that has SCA at the back most of the time. I don’t think Dawn you’ll find the answer over a beer in Newport with the girls, as they probably don’t know exactly…that’s the tough part when its so close, its not like there are magic answers that you
just switch on.

And finally on damages to the boats. Its getting to be a boring and unfair commentary now about Dongfeng. The Dongfeng guys haven’t broken anything more than the others (and for example we’re the only ones to have not broken an outrigger tube), beyond a faulty mast/rigging package with which we’ve only had problems since the start, and for which there isn’t a single bit of evidence that it broke due to user error in some way. We have just been the most honest and open. We’ve shared every thing we’ve broken, and usually within minutes. It’s the communication ethos we’ve had at OC Sport since its inception. It surprised Ellen MacArthur’s competitors more than a decade ago, and we’ve never waivered from this approach. We are the only team to have been doing this. We see the damage lists in the stopovers, we’re not the ones breaking the boat more, or somehow pushing the boat harder – this is totally rubbish. Of course people needed to find a ‘reason’ why our less experienced and young team have upset the order since the start. There were even midnight escapades by one team to try and measure bits of our boat as they were convinced (wrongly) that somehow we had a faster or different boat. No-one paid any attention to us in Alicante, and no-one wanted boat number 1 as its assumed to be less well built. And since we surprised them with our Figaro style trained crew, rather than just accept that there is a different way to do this race than just with the old Anglo-saxon approach, some of competitors refuse to just accept they were behind us fairly!

If you want to see who has been taking care of their boat more, or at least the approach, look who was the boat refusing to do a crash gybe at downwind mark in Cape Town. Dongfeng was the one doing a very long and slow tack to preserve material. We saw the true characters of some of the other boats on that inshore loop.

Craig interesting your conclusions about people taking specific roles onboard. Actually, beyond the Chinese sailors for which you are right (eg they can’t drive, so immediately it limits their roles), actually it’s the opposite. Solo sailors which form a big part of this team, are multi-talented – and they can move around roles much more than the standard Anglo-saxon sailor. So there isn’t more fatigue because of that. But you are right that certainly this means there is more pressure on the non-Chinese sailors, and you could be right that that translates in to more fatigue on certain guys – maybe on Kevin Escoffier for example who drives, does bow, is Mr Fixit and looks after Horace the bow too. Chaperoning the Chinese guys has been an extra role for all the team, but as their ability has grown, this has become a lesser constraint.

For sure the big constraint we have on Dongfeng is that we don’t have 8 people that can drive fast, or drive at all. It’s the strength of the A team on Abu Dhabi, and that’s been clear since the start. Its why for me they have always been the favourites.

Brunel erg slecht deze keer
Zo alom bekeken zitten ze vanaf de tweede leg in een neerwaartse spiraal