ADOR’s sailors reacted quickly to avoid losing second place overnight when a fitting holding up Azzam’s J1 headsail snapped as the Abu Dhabi yacht was slogging to windward on the approach to the Vietnamese coast. Fortunately Ian Walker’s and his crew had practised for exactly this situation and were able to use another halyard to quickly re-hoist the sail before they swapped the load on to a jury-rigged setup. With the sail pulling once again, Azzam was soon back up to speed with only minimal time lost. “We probably lost about a mile when it happened,” explained Walker. “Fortunately we foresaw this sort of issue during our training sessions and had rehearsed how we would deal with it. Now, the bigger issue now is how we are going to re-feed the old halyard into the mast – something we need to do sooner rather than later.” A sortie up Azzam’s mast by ADOR bowman Justin Slattery proved unsuccessful when he was forced back down by the violent pitching of the mast as Azzam rode over the bumpy South China Sea waves. “Justin gave it a good go but it was too rough to get it done,” Walker said. “Hopefully we will get flatter water as we get nearer to Vietnam.” At the 0640 UTC position report this morning ADOR was in second place, 57 miles behind leader Dongfeng Race Team and a fraction under 10 miles ahead of third placed Team Alvimedica. #inabudhabi #goazzam #volvooceanrace #vor
Posted on: Sat, 24 Jan 2015 11:08:05 +0000
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