Crash & burn and pushing it to the edge. (VOR Updates)
From the Ericcson boat:
6 February 2006
Chinese for dinner?
Written by Steve Hayles (GBR): Sounds like a nice idea doesn't it; well not if you are talking about Chinese gybing a VO70 at full speed in the middle of the night in the Southern Ocean. For those of you without a clear picture of a Chinese gybe it’s just about the ugliest thing that could happen to us bar sinking!
When running downwind in these boats in 25 knots we carry a full size mainsail and a spinnaker that is 500 m2 which is all fine when you are sailing away from wind at 20 knots but if you loose control of the boat, which can happen very easily in these boats, you normally broach which means when the rudder doesn't have enough grip to keep you going straight and the boat rounds up into the wind uncontrollably. A broach in itself is a mess, with a huge spinnaker now seeing the full force of the wind as you round up almost head to wind. The thing flogs violently and is in great danger of destroying itself.
Often the only way out of this is to drop the sail and slowly regain control of the boat. Getting the thing down is hard enough normally so when you are lying on your side and the spinnaker is flogging violently it becomes very difficult. We affectionately call the maneuver a 'wipe-out’ or (excuse my French) an ass-out and its something that we know will happen probably a handful of times during a leg like this. Some broaches are small and easily recoverable and others can take half an hour to get out of.
We broached last night with everything up'(full size main, spinnaker and staysail), sat in the nav station I hear the rudder stall first; a huge rush of air under the boat as it looses its grip on the fast flowing water. This is accompanied by a very quick change of heading and a large heel angle.
Last night I was talking with Neal in his bunk when suddenly you felt we were going to loose it; I rushed for the hatch expecting to find the guys rigging the chute to drop it (it was the sail that we destroyed two days into the race which cost us so many miles before the first ice waypoint) but it looked like we might recover. The key to getting out of a broach is to maintaining some forward speed; the rudder is the only thing that turns the boat and it needs water to flow over it to work. I heard someone shout that we still doing four knots and you could feel the boat slowly getting back under control.
As you bear away things happen really fast; the mainsheet, spinnaker sheet and vang are all blown quickly to try and prevent the broach in the first place and now you need to get both sails under control quickly. If it all works well you are off again downwind at 25 knots and providing the sails are in one piece you have a lost some distance but nothing more.
Last night unfortunately did not turn out like that; we recovered the broach and got going downwind but then a series of very quick events lead to us Chinese gybing. We got going downwind but could not get the sails trimmed on quick enough which means they have a tendency to make the boat lean the opposite way to normal. When it does this it wants to turn dangerously to leeward and as we hit the bottom of the first wave you could feel that we were going to go out the wrong way'.
The scariest part was looking up at the boom which was pointing nearly vertically by now and knowing that within seconds the mainsail would gybe uncontrollably. The sail, the ropes attached to it and more worryingly the boom come across with such phenomenal power that anyone in the way would be lucky to survive. The problem is magnified massively by the fact that our canting keel is no longer helping to keep us upright but actually contributing to heeling us over. Combined with tons of kit now on the wrong side the boat lays over to about 70 degrees and the mess on deck is completely indescribable; everything is on the wrong side, the mainsail is pinned against the runner and every single rope is a tangle heap of spaghetti in the cockpit which is now full of tons of water.
It’s amazingly disorientating trying to work out where to stand and which winches and ropes you are after. First job is to make sure we still have everyone and no major injuries and at that point things start to happen very slowly. The next thing is to get the keel back in the middle; fortunately the race organizers are smart enough to make us have an automated button to do this. You can't start the generator; it’s a gravity fuel system and the cooling inlet would be three feet in the air. The batteries kick in a DC motor which moves the keel slowly but surely to the middle. You only have to press on button to do it but its now above your head where you aren't used to it and it took a couple of minutes to find it when it normally a couple of seconds.
At this stage you need some careful thinking to get out safely with the minimum of damage; moving around is painfully slow and fairly dangerous so careful planning is the order of the day. The list of tasks is long and I won't describe everything here, apart from to say that it took two hours to get upright and get sailing again, albeit slowly.
Boats normally suffer lots of damage in one of these events; SEB in the last race lost their mast when they did it for instance; and you normally expect broken sail battens and blown out spinnakers. Remarkably, everything survived and a few hours later we were back to full speed.
It cost us a fair few miles, and with the forecast not playing out as I would like, we find ourselves behind the Brazilians and loosing to the leading three. Its been the hardest 24 hours of the race for all of us and the brutal facts are that with 2000 miles to Cape Horn this sort of drama is far from over.
It’s starting to feel properly cold now and we can't use our heaters as a charging problem is chewing through our diesel at a higher rate than we planned for. The whole crew is exhausted and yet we need to push harder to stay in the hunt.
A day like today will be hard to forget and although I know we will laugh about it one day, right now it sits as a reminder of how close to edge we are.
Suddenly, life at the extreme doesn't seem like just a catchy slogan.
Steve
Abn Amro 2
To quote Charles Dickens, it has been the best of times and the worst of times over the last 24 hours. We have finally started to make inroads into the leads of the rest of the fleet, with a little more wind than the others and an angle that is a little more favourable we have been doing some really, really fast sailing. I looked at the max speed on the GPS earlier and we have broken the mythical 40 knots barrier. At some point
last night no doubt careering down a wave with the driver unable to see where he's going we topped out at 40.6 Knots.
Guided by only a few numbers on the back face of the mast it is like some sort of crazy roller coaster, only there are no tracks and you are in control. As you accelerate of down a wave the spray starts coming at you
hard. You hear it beating against your visor and as you put your head down to avoid the worst of it. When you look up you cannot see the numbers, just a blur of lights. You hope for the next wave of spray to
clear your visor and that you are on track as you come to the bottom of the wave. By now you are ducking down, knowing the bottom of the wave isimminent and you are praying you are not going to land too hard. Before you crash into the bottom you catch a glimpse of you course, you're OK, on track, speed 30 something then bang! The wave comes charging back at you grip the wheel hoping you don't get washed off the wheel again. Then, it's over, you dust yourself off and set off to repeat the whole cycle
again...
However all this speed has come at a price, with the wind angle at 110 there is a lot of water over the boat, even with waterproofs, mid layers, gaiters on your boots the water manages to get in and we are wet to the
skin. Wave after wave punishes you as you stand there at the helm. Sadly the water has been punishing the mainsail too. With the sunrise this morning we were able to access the extend of the damage and it looks
pretty bad - over a metre long tear in the film near the leech and no way of sewing it back up again. We will have to wait until conditions get dryer before we can stick it up. Easier said than done in the Southern
Ocean with a 25 knot forecast for the next 5 days. Until we can effect a repair we are forced to sail with 2 reefs. Already we are seeing a difference in performance and it makes my guts churn - so close and yet so
far to get back into the race. However we are still charging hard, it's not over yet - we will get back in this race.
Cheers,
Si Fi
