Sailing: Waterspout adds a new twist for ocean racers
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Your support makes all the difference.A huge waterspout sent the leading competitors scurrying for cover on the first night of the Sydney to Hobart Race after they had already battled 30-foot seas and 25 to 30-knot wind heading for the Bass Strait.
"It was the biggest, most awesome and awful experience I have ever felt," said Ludde Ingvall, the Swedish skipper of the 80ft Nicorette chasing back-to-back wins in the 630-mile ocean racing classic. Winds gusting up to 100 knots wrecked Ingvall's mainsail, while the boat was also battered by hailstones. "It flipped the boat on its side and you could see a clear, white suction tube like a huge vacuum cleaner," said Ingvall, who had to hang on to the wheel as he felt himself being sucked up into the air.
Ross Field, the navigator of the second-placed VO 60, News Corp, in the fleet of eight doing the Hobart Race as part of the third leg of the Volvo Ocean Race, said: "It was an incredible sight and nothing like anyone has experienced before, giving us winds up to 58 knots. It was really scary. There was nowhere to go."
By the second night, 13 of the original 75 starters had retired, including Sean Langman's Grundig. The crew put out a distress call reporting serious structural failure in the bow, but managed to nurse the boat the 120 miles to safety in Eden.
With bow problems of a different kind was the Volvo 60 djuice, Knut Frostad reporting an echo of the damage suffered by illbruck at the start of leg two, when a leaking hatch allowed water to swamp the bow compartment. The all-woman crew on Amer Sports Too will have to wait until their Hobart stopover properly to repair a broken mast forestay.
Kevin Shoebridge, back in Tyco after retiring from leg two, will not be given a finish in the Hobart race because he failed to meet a position reporting requirement, but it will not affect his points at the Volvo finish of leg three, towards the end of next week in Auckland.
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