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CAMPER heading to Chile to repair bow damage
CAMPER will divert to to Puerto Montt on the west coast of Chile to repair bow damage suffered in the ferocious conditions currently being experienced in the Southern Ocean.
CAMPER with Emirates Team New Zealand skipper Chris Nicholson confirmed the need to go in for repairs, while pledging to resume racing and reach the finish of Leg 5 Itajaí in Brazil.
"We are 2,500 nautical miles away from where we are going, which is Puerto Montt in Chile, on the western coast," skipper Chris Nicholson said. "It’s about 800 nautical miles north of Cape Horn.
"What led us to this course is I guess like a classic Southern Ocean snowball effect where we had some problems with our bulkhead early on in the race, we repaired that only for that repair to fail again probably about three days ago.
"Then we were trying to stem the flow in terms of stopping the problem getting any worse. The bulkhead offers a lot of support to our longitudinals (hull supports) and we have to keep the longitudinals intact.
"Unfortunately some of the secondary bonding let go off the longitudinal and that’s basically when seamanship has to take over and basically call enough is enough.
"We are running out of spare materials to effect repairs at sea and the repairs are struggling to be effective so we had to slow the boat down immediately and assess the situation.
"We estimate it will be three days of repairs and then we will be on our way to Itajaí. So we will suspend racing once we get closer to Puerto Montt, do our repairs and get back in the race."
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@John Seaman. It does not matter that some boats are dropping out of racing. I'd watch just one of these boats going around the planet. The fact that this generation of boats is perhaps a little fragile just demonstrates to great seamanship these guys have to go fast and stay safe. OK some are now just staying safe.
I agree with Tom Franken. His idea, along with having more legs in the southern ocean, would restore the balance between speed and endurance. Interestingly enough, the third generation boats seem neither as fast, nor as durable as the previous generations (they haven't been anywhere close to breaking the monohull record)...
All the comments are right to some extent. For this Southern Ocean leg it seems like Formula 1 cars on a rally track. However, most of the legs require a yacht that is built for speed and not for endurance. It is alos clear that sponsor requirement have to fulfilled, so there is no option to leave the 'light legs' out. However, a solution can be found in the points to be earned in different legs. In the present system the current leg is rewarded in the same way as the leg from Lorient to Galway. If the heavy and long legs are rewarded with more points, then automatically the balance between endurance and speed will be equalized.
I'm from CHile and if this is my best chance of being close to one of these boats I will definetely book a plane to puerto montt to check it out
Whatever the reasons this leg has killed the buzz for me. Half the boats out before halfway mark. It kind of feels ridiculous all this effort by sponsors, staff, crews - when the boat is very likely to break and either quit or lose it's position. Maybe stick more to in-port racing...
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