Race 13 - Day 16
Crew Diary - Crew Diary: Race 13
12 July
Thursday July 11, 2024 – The Ocean Sprint
A sprint across the ocean sounds odd when taken at face value. But it’s become quite the common feeling over the past few weeks. Each day has felt like a series of sprints coupled by a series of smaller sprints, each executed by the individual watches while the others sleep and eat to gather the strength needed to supplant the exhausted crew finishing their own tributes to the overall progress of the team. But now we had arrived at the official Leg 8 Ocean Sprint, a race across a predetermined set of longitudinal meridians to see which vessel can make the passage in the shortest amount of time.
For Race 13 on Leg 8, the start and finish lines were set at W025° and W018° respectively. Due to the concentric nature of longitudinal meridians, the distance across is greater the further south you attempt the sprint. With this in mind, our Skipper decided to enter the sprint as far north as made sense to reduce the distance across the sprint zone. Once we entered, we would adjust course to a heading of around 090° and try to race directly west to east as fast as possible.
Our overall position in Leg 8 has us sitting in 11th place yet again. We really needed to perform well to score some points in an attempt to climb out of the cellar and hopefully back into the top 10 overall point standings. For additional strategy (and potentially some cheekiness), our Skipper chose to go stealth just before we entered at 1800 UTC to try and make the full way across while undetectable by the other boats. I personally didn’t see much strategy in the move as that’s what everyone would assume we would be doing but I did appreciate the attempt to do so within the 24-hour stealth duration. It would be a great motivating factor for the team giving us a short-term achievable goal to direct our focus and efforts towards with the potential of a moral boost, which this boat and her seafarers could absolutely use.
We entered the sprint at 1900 UTC with good northern position around N56°16’ latitude and plenty of wind just after we went into stealth mode. The wind was consistent at 15+ knots just behind our beam pushing the boat 085° COG at 11kts SOG. We had our Code 1 spinnaker flying with a full mainsail and the seas were quite flat with any swells following, giving us an extra couple knots on the surf. Morale was as high as it has been since the first week before multiple kite-mares had left us somewhat uncompetitive for the past six days.
Nearing 2200 UTC, a large military style vessel approached off our port bow. She had no markings, no ensign, and no visible weaponry so her class and category were unknown. Multiple theories began being tossed around as to her identity, ranging from a modified private yacht to a abnormal fishing vessel to the Norwegian Navy research vessel. Our rival sistership CV29 (PSP Logistics) hailed us on the radio and said the same boat had blocked their direct path and then began circling them. They claimed it to be an unmarked Russian Navy vessel due to her steep bow and aggressive tactics. We just added that to the list of potentials and we moved on with our night.
Around midnight the night before, our AQP Maisie noticed the foot pump for the aft head sink had broken off and was sitting on the floor in the head. She, my watchmate Brian, and I took to fixing the pump, only to realize we could not remove the pump to repair it due to the cheap quality of the pump mount and the inability to get behind it to cut the mounting bolts loose. After a few hours of effort, we decided to call time of death, put the hose clamps back on, closed the sink for the remained of the race and head onto the deck for our 0200-0500 watch.
Once on deck the winds began to build to above 20kts apparent, meeting the limits of the Code 1 spinnaker. The seas had also built to a few meters in height and moved to directly behind the boat. Each time a large wave struck the stern square, it would lift the boat and twist her bow either side before beginning to surf. The boat would lurch to one side or the other disrupting the even airflow across the Code 1 causing it to either collapse when turned downwind or to become overpowered if upwind. We still did not have our Code 2 repaired so we did not have many options other than to move to the Code 3, which has just recently been repaired after being torn nearly sixdays ago.
Although our skipper seemed not too happy about Maisie making the decision to change the sail, I felt it was absolutely the right call. If we lost our Code 1 that would have been our 3rdblown kite in one week. There would be zero chance our sail repairer, Mel, would be able to repair it in time before reaching Oban triggering another 6-point penalty, points we did not have to give if we wanted any chance of climbing out of the basement subfloor in the overall standings. We called for the support watch to come assist us on deck and began the process of dropping the Code 1 and hoisting the Code 3.
The sail change went nearly flawlessly. Each person took charge of their position masterfully. The Code 3 was brought on deck from the sail locker and the drop team began lowering the Code 1 and stowing her below to begin the wooling process so she could be hoisted again as soon as conditions permitted. From the time we made the call to change sails until the new kite was hoisted and we were back on track, the period was less than 25 minutes. For our team in those conditions, that was a very respectable time. We were back on track making nearly the same SOG with much better control of the boat going deeper into the night. We turned the deck watch over to the next team and I laid down for a few hours of sleep before our next support watch three hours later.
A few hours into my sleep, the next support watch discovered a massive amount of water in the bilge. They bailed 15 buckets of water from one bilge alone, so Brian and I went looking for the cause as soon as we woke up. We immediately suspected the foot pump we had serviced and sure enough that was the culprit. The jubilee hose clips that held the raw water intake and output hoses onto the pump had worked themselves loose and it had been dumping seawater into the boat over the last few hours. It was so much water it spilled into the adjacent galley and mast bilges triggering the automatic electric bilge pump. We reattached the clips and were good to go for the rest of the night. We headed to the deck and continued our scream across the sprint.
Nearing the 24-hour mark after we entered the sprint zone, we had sailed 233.7nm and exited with a time the boat could be proud of, 23:54:56 for an average speed of 9.8kts. We surmised only one boat would have a time faster than ours and were very excited to hopefully earn a few extra points this leg which we significantly needed. As soon as we made it through the sprint Skipper immediately made the call to move back to the Code 1 and try to catch PSP Logistics and retake 10th place for the first time since our first spinnaker eruption. The race was back on!