There was a sense of triumph for the all female duo aboard GAES Centros Auditivos as they crossed the Equator into the Northern Hemisphere yesterday morning. The GAES girls are now just under 3,000 miles from the finish line and toasted Neptune one last time on this race to request safe onward passage to their final destination of Barcelona. Caffari and Corbella were also celebrating the completion of the repair to the damaged ballast tank over the weekend which involved slowing the boat right down to avoid too much movement. The duo then had to take it easy for a further 48 hours before they were satisfied that the repair was strong enough to withstand normal racing conditions.
Commenting on completion of the repair, Caffari said:
“I am relieved that we have completed the repair and hope that we have done good enough job for it to withstand the final miles of the race. We had gained miles on the boats ahead before our slow down and then lost them all again and some which was pretty frustrating, however, we did take full advantage of the conditions with Anna climbing the mast to carry out a rig check.”
Project Manager, Joff Brown, added:
“The girls have done a great job on the repair, and really we just need to keep our fingers crossed. We’re pretty confident it should be ok, but when you’re doing repairs at sea with limited materials, it’s really difficult to estimate how reliable it’s going to be. However, we’ve had really good results in the past with the special Sicomin Resin we use for working in damp and wet conditions, so it should be ok. They’ve just got to try and judge the conditions onboard really, try and avoid the big repeated slams and maybe throttle back if conditions are bad. Unfortunately they’re now upwind for most of what’s left of the race.”
At the 0900hrs ranking, Caffari and Corbella maintain their 6th place position. The Barcelona Word Race continues to be led by Virbac-Paprec 3, who are now a little over 1000 miles from the finish line. Mapfre are in second place with Renault Z.E. holding third.