TELEFÓNICA BLUE LEG ONE DAY 17 QFB: received 27.10.08 0525 GMT
Last night we had to sail the unfavoured gybe several times, as we were getting too close to the ridge of High pressure. So we actually had to sail away from Cape Town to stay in the breeze. It is impossible to describe what the feeling inside is, for myself or Sifi (Simon Fisher – navigator). It just hurts badly - just looking at the numbers and knowing that you sail a course 180 degrees away from the point you want go to, it just goes against your nature.
But we know that this was the right call. It is like driving in your car, and there is brick wall ahead of you. You keep going straight you know you are in trouble, as you will hit the wall and most likely come to a full stop. Better drive a couple of extra metres to get around the wall, and keep moving. So a relatively small loss compared with the other boats right now, but as the low pressure is arriving it is very likely that the rich are getting richer. For us it was damage control and to stay in touch with the leaders.
Yesterday evening was used for a full maintenance and servicing of all equipment. Patan (Pablo Arrarte/ESP) and Xabi (Xabier Fernandez/ESP), serviced all the winches again. Pepe (Ribes) was up the rig to check everything, and Laurent (Pages/FRA) did some work on the sails. Jordi (Calafat) has been working on the new design of our running spinnaker, for which the first panels will have to be cut tomorrow, so that it will be ready for use in the next leg. With only 24 sails for the entire race, you have to be careful, not to ‘burn’ too many sails in early days. So this new sail we had not planned for, as originally this sail was supposed to last until China. No real problem, we had some spare cards, (sails not planned yet) but we will have to re-think the strategy for building new sails.
cheers,
Bouwe Bekking - skipper