· High stress levels and intense concentration as the two Barcelona IMOCA Open 60’s fight to get free of the light winds and into the strong north easterlies which will propel them at speed towards Gibraltar.
· W Hotels closes up and sights leader Estrella Damm five miles away after four days and 1450 miles of racing since leaving New York Thursday.
Barcelona, 12 April 2010.- If any small measure or additional motivation was required for the two teams on the Barcelona IMOCA Open 60’s, it was injected early this morning when W Hotels spotted their sole rivals Estrella Damm on the horizon only five or six miles away after four days and 1400 miles of racing since the pair set their transatlantic duel in motion, departing New York’s Ambrose Light last Thursday.
On running into the calmer airs Sunday both teams had individually highlighted that light, capricious breezes are much more stressful and tiring than the high speed, on- the-edge reaching which they have enjoyed since they left. And today as they fought for every metre early on (their) Monday morning, the resulting fatigue was much more apparent in the voices of the two co-skippers who joined today’s short audio call to the Record control headquarters in Barcelona.
W Hotels’ Toño Piris (ESP) admitted that he is maybe getting no more than an hour’s sleep in eight, and even when he did lie down to rest, his level of stress and adrenalin, hearing his team-mates working tirelessly on deck was not conducive to switching off and achieving restful sleep easily.
But Piris and Pachi Rivero (ESP), along with American co-skipper Peter Becker ,were quietly satisfied that their hard work to date has ensured they remain a constant challenge to Estrella Damm, the yacht on which Pepe Ribes (ESP) and Alex Pella (ESP) have already completed one gruelling east-to-west Transatlantic last November as a duo.
Their key focus during the hours of very light breezes and calms have been simply to keep the boat moving. Piris explained today that they had already witnessed the ‘triple donuts’ on the speedo that all sailors hate to see, a trio of big fat zeroes.
On the IMOCA Open 60’s when the boat stops and steerage is lost, the boat can tack involuntarily and it takes many minutes to regain boat speed and to sort out the mess of sails and ropes which sometimes results.
Both boats were on the wind, trying to maintain forward momentum to escape the clutches of the high pressure ridge which has been barring their eastwards progress. Estrella Damm’s Pepe Ribes wondered if they might be emerging from the worst of it, arriving into a more northerly breeze.
After having a deficit of 26 miles yesterday evening, today W-Hotels was within five miles of their rival, and was still sailing slightly faster on average, but as soon as they wriggle free of the calm zone they remain assured of a speedy passage to the Straits of Gibraltar.
Quotes:
Pepe Ribes (ESP) Co-skipper Estrella Damm (ESP): “We are sharing all the jobs, we do everything when we are on watch. Everyone does his job and we are doing very well. We are not specialised in any one thing, we all do the work depending who is on watch, the one who is off watch is the one who is doing the weather. We normally schedule everything like that at the moment. Last night was very stressful with a lot of sail changes and we still only have three knots of wind, so there is a lot of concentration to sail the boats in the puffs, to trim the sails and to drive the boat, build the speed up. We are very tired but we need to keep up concentration. We are doing about 4 knots of boat speed at the moment, the wind is from about 090 degrees and we are heading 140 degrees. We are not really sure where we are in relation to the middle of the high pressure ridge. The decision where we head all the time is about where we can make maximum speed, the best angles for the wind and where we want to be going, we are not really thinking about W Hotels at the moment. If we were 20 miles from Barcelona it would be maybe different but there are too many miles to go.”
Toño Piris (ESP) co-skipper W Hotels (ESP): “We are both on port tack, we have the wind right on the nose, under Code Zero, but we cannot tack yet. It feels like we have been eaten by the High. We have even had 0.00 but have been able to move on in some puffs under the clouds, but not much. We both knew that we would have to pass through the complicated high area. We hope this evening we will be able to tack and get the Northerlies. It is a difficult situation. The sea conditions are quite flat, we put some stuff out to dry. In these conditions with a sailboat you have to concentrate more when it is light. In terms of rest I can reassure you that we are all tired. We were lucky to have less than maybe one hour every eight hours or something. It does not matter if you are supposed to have three hours to go to sleep or three hours to be on watch. I personally have struggled to find sleep. Pachi is an incredible hard worker all the time, he does a bit of navigation and then is on the bow and is all over all the time but we are all very motivated and very hard working. Peter is working like a champ all the time and is really motivated.”
Standings at 1300hrs GMT Monday:
1 Estrella Damm (ESP), Ribes, Pella, Schreyer: 2260.9 miles to finish
2 W Hotels (ESP), Rivero, Pires, Becker: 2267.3 miles to finish (+6.4 miles)
