{"id":68,"date":"2011-08-26T15:02:53","date_gmt":"2011-08-26T15:02:53","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/yachtracing.biz\/life\/?p=68"},"modified":"2011-08-26T15:02:53","modified_gmt":"2011-08-26T15:02:53","slug":"global-ocean-race-palma-start","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/yachtracing.biz\/life\/2011\/08\/global-ocean-race-palma-start\/","title":{"rendered":"Global Ocean Race Class 40s Head For Start in Palma"},"content":{"rendered":"

With one month remaining until the start of the double-handed, Class40 Global Ocean Race<\/a> 2011-12 (GOR) on Sunday 25 September in Palma, Mallorca, the teams are heading for the start line.<\/p>\n

The first team to set off for Palma was the South African duo of Nick Leggatt and Phillippa Hutton-Squire on their Akilaria Class40 Phesheya-Racing. The team left their UK base in Gosport on the English South Coast just over one week ago, sailing four-up with Hutton-Squire\u2019s parents. \u201cOn Monday evening we crossed the Traffic Separation Scheme and sailed round Cabo De Sao Vicente towards Cadiz,\u201d reports Hutton-Squire. \u201cNick and Dad had a great blast between the TSS and the cape with the big kite up, full main and 20 knots of breeze in flat water,\u201d she continued. \u201cWhen I came on watch later, they had big smiles and said they would remember it for a long time. Dad said he even braved a turn on the stick and flew along at 15 knots in the dark. However, he thought it was a bit hair-raising!\u201d The delivery trip has also provided a testing ground for a mysterious addition to the team\u2019s sail inventory: \u201cWe gave one of our new secret weapons a good test today,\u201d reveals Hutton-Squire. \u201cI think it will really help us get out of the Mediterranean and home to Cape Town. We matched boat speed and wind speed with this magic sail.\u201d<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, the Italian-British GOR team of Marco Nannini and Paul Peggs recovered quickly from their dismasting at the start of the Rolex Fastnet Race. Fortunately, the failure of the Akilaria Class40\u2019s Solent furling swivel eye early in the race caused minimal damage to the duo\u2019s new carbon mast: \u201cThe four days after the dismasting will go down as some of the most stressful I’ve had to deal with,\u201d admits Nannini. \u201cDismasting less than 40 days to the start of the Global Ocean Race, having already quit my job and rented out my flat in London was likely to pose a few headaches,\u201d he adds with immense understatement.<\/p>\n

Fully aware of the time pressure, Nannini and Peggs leapt into action, immediately booking an ultrasound test for the mast, delivering the mainsail to GP Sails for repairs and driving the rigging to Allspars in Plymouth for checking. By the fourth day, major progress had been made: \u201cBy Wednesday, Paul had the boom repair nearly finished and on Thursday morning the rigging was returned, two new fittings – including the one that broke – had been machined for us and one rod was replaced.\u201d Exactly one week after the dismasting, the boat left Gosport with Paul Peggs and four crew for the 1,800 mile delivery to Palma.<\/p>\n

While Nannini and Peggs retired from the Rolex Fastnet Race, the New Zealand, father-and-son GOR duo of Ross and Campbell Field completed the race taking seventh place in 17 finishers having led the fleet for some of the 600 miles, crossing the finish line and heading straight to their UK base in Lymington without a stopover in Plymouth. On Wednesday early afternoon, less than a week after finishing the Fastnet, the Field\u2019s and their Tyker 40 BSL left Lymington\u2019s Berthon Boatyard and set sail for the start line.<\/p>\n

The Fastnet was the first race on a Class40 for the Field\u2019s and a chance for the team to compare their boat to other Class40\u2019s. \u201cThe only problem we had was taking our eyes off the ball close to the finish and dropped a couple of places,\u201d explained Campbell at a bon voyage party in Lymington the night before heading to Palma. \u201cBut the boat is really, really quick,\u201d he confirmed. \u201cThere will be absolutely no way we can blame the boat for poor performance during the Global Ocean Race \u2013 there\u2019ll be no excuses!\u201d<\/p>\n

With a meticulously planned GOR campaign, only a few final details remained after the Fastnet, including the purchase of two stout buckets from a farm supply shop to supplement their boat\u2019s existing head. Mindful that an inferior bucket might suffer collapse while in use during rough conditions, Ross Field took precautions: \u201cI did make certain the buckets were up to the job by sitting on them in the middle of the shop,\u201d he explains. \u201cThis created quite a stir with the staff and customers!\u201d As a veteran of five circumnavigations in the Whitbread Round-The-World Race and the Volvo Ocean Race<\/a>, Ross Field is already accustomed to a diet of freeze dried food and the duo has decided not to take fresh food for the trip to Palma. \u201cThe brand we have is delicious,\u201d claims Ross. \u201cWe had freeze dried roast lamb a couple of days ago and it tasted great. The only give away is that all the pieces of meat are identically sized cubes.\u201d<\/p>\n

Ross and Campbell Field and BSL will stop briefly in Cherbourg, France, and rendezvous with the GOR\u2019s Franco-British team of Halvard Mabire and Miranda Merron and their new Pogo 40S\u00b2 Campagne de France; the two teams will then continue to Cherbourg together. The GOR<\/a> fleet will be in Palma\u2019s main marina from Monday 5 September until the start of Leg 1 to Cape Town,<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

With one month remaining until the start of the double-handed, Class40 Global Ocean Race 2011-12 (GOR) on Sunday 25 September in Palma, Mallorca, the teams are heading for the start line. The first team to set off for Palma was the South African duo of Nick Leggatt and Phillippa Hutton-Squire on their Akilaria Class40 Phesheya-Racing. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[86],"tags":[89,494,88,91,68,87,90],"class_list":["post-68","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-global-ocean-race","tag-class-40","tag-global-ocean-race","tag-mallorca","tag-marco-nannini","tag-offshore","tag-palma","tag-round-the-world"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/yachtracing.biz\/life\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/68","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/yachtracing.biz\/life\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/yachtracing.biz\/life\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/yachtracing.biz\/life\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/yachtracing.biz\/life\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=68"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/yachtracing.biz\/life\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/68\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":71,"href":"http:\/\/yachtracing.biz\/life\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/68\/revisions\/71"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/yachtracing.biz\/life\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=68"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/yachtracing.biz\/life\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=68"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/yachtracing.biz\/life\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=68"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}