CAPE HORN 820 nm W/NW – Even zag het er naar uit dat de “Round The World Sailing record poging voor de catamaran Cheyenne in gevaar kwam. Zaterdagochtend kwam de grootzeilkar ter hoogte van het eerste rif compleet los.
Met deze beschadiging kon het grootzeil maar gehesen worden tot aan het tweede rif wat een aanzienlijke snelheidsvermindering teweeg bracht.
De eerste planning was om te wachten met de reparatie tot aan de beschermende wateren van de Falklands. De gedachte om dan verscheidende dagen niet 100% volluit te kunnen gaan heeft de bemanning ertoe aangezet om de noodzakelijke reparatie toch op volle oceaan uit te voeren.
Steve Fosset’s commentaar na de herstelling (om 23u59 GMT):
“I can’t believe these guys fixed the mast. With a “Do it now” attitude, the Cheyenne crew mobilized on Sunday morning to make the necessary repairs. As reported earlier, a section of mainsail track on the mast ripped off early Saturday morning. The initial repair plan was to anchor in a protected bay in the Falkland Islands to attempt the repairs. The suspense of not knowing if it was repairable was too great – and the crew attacked the problem at sea 3 days from Cape Horn.
Justin Slattery and Dave Scully were up the mast for over 6 hours during the day. The first challenge was to remove the 13 screws which had sheared off. This required drilling and use of Easy Out tools. Then a similar section was removed from the the Third Reef location and fitted to the more important First Reef point. All this while suspended from the Man Halyard of the swinging mast. Meanwhile Mike Beasley fabricated replacement Third Reef track out of damaged and miscellaneous spares. Mike and Damian Foxall went up the mast to install the replacement.
Without a successful fix, Cheyenne was limited to raising the mainsail only to the Second Reef, a restriction which would have made it impossible to sail fast enough to break the record of Orange. Sure, we lost a lot of time on this whole episode, but now we are again in the hunt for the record.”
Meer nieuws via: http://www.fossettchallenge.com/
