Dongfeng's broken rudder setback in Volvo Ocean Race Leg 1
by Volvo Ocean Race 18 Oct 2014 15:34 BST
18 October 2014
'Violent impact' halts leaders in their tracks
Dongfeng Race Team lost the lead in the Volvo Ocean Race early on Saturday after the boat hit an unidentified object and broke their rudder.
They lost the lead but replaced the decimated part and they were soon back sailing at 20 knots.
The problem enabled Abu Dhabi Ocean Racing to take the lead but the rest of the fleet were still hot on their heels.
The Chinese team's problems began at 0210 UTC when a 'violent impact' hit the boat.
Dongfeng's onboard reporter Yann Riou picks up the story: "We had two options, installing the emergency rudder or removing what was left of the old rudder and putting the new one in place. We decided to go for the second option.
"Thomas (Rouxel) put the diving suit on. He jumped into the water... removed what was left from the old rudder (not much) and we put the new one in place.
"We are all disappointed... it does not look very fair but there's nothing to do about this."
It has not been plain sailing for Ian Walker's Abu Dhabi crew either. They reported narrowly missing a net yesterday afternoon but the winds were so light that they were able to take avoiding action.
Team Brunel and Team SCA were not so lucky and were held up briefly after debris caught in their keels.
The Dutch boat even had to send a swimmer into the water to dive down to remove a strip of rubber from their keel.
The women's team also showed an irregular track and reported running into a fishing net, leading to more lost time behind the rest of the fleet who are now some 50 miles ahead of them.
The seven-strong fleet were expected to arrive in Cape Town in the first leg from Alicante at the beginning of November but their estimated arrival may be delayed after light winds in the Atlantic held up their progress.
www.volvooceanrace.com
It's not how big the problem is, it's how you deal with it! (from Dongfeng Race Team)
"Last night we were leading by 18 miles and I went to bed happy..." – Team Director, Bruno Dubois
At 0210 UTC Dongfeng Race Team hit an unknown object in the Atlantic Ocean just off the coast of Africa and broke their rudder. This resulted in the team performing an emergency rudder replacement, a difficult operation in the pitch black of night, in less than 2 hours. After fighting to keep first place for nearly two days, they watched Abu Dhabi Ocean Racing sail straight past them as they dropped from first place to third, and then retook 2nd again as the pushed hard to regain lost ground.
When we received the information from the boat that they had destroyed the port (left hand of the two rudders on the Volvo Ocean 65s) rudder Thomas [Rouxel] was already underwater checking the extent of the damage, which is not an easy task in the pitch black of the Atlantic. At this point the team did not have a position report and wouldn't have one for another few hours but watching Abu Dhabi Ocean Racing sail past was enough to let them know that their reign in first place was over.
Leading the fleet had felt great, naturally because that's how being first makes you feel, but also because nobody expected it. The relief Charles Caudrelier felt at proving his team could compete in these conditions with the likes of Abu Dhabi Ocean Racing is undeniable. "At least knowing we have good boat speed is one less thing to worry about," he smiled yesterday before the incident.
The object hit remains unidentified. "I don't know what we smashed [in to] but the rudder has been cleanly broken off [near the hull]," explained Kevin Escoffier as he inspected the damage.
It was an impressive turnaround for such a complex task, not forgetting that communication onboard was in English only, none of the sailors' first language. "It took us two hours of work but we finally have the spare rudder in. It has been a really great effort from the team and I'm actually quite proud of us doing that." – Martin Strömberg.
The determined men onboard Dongfeng are still fighting as they tussle with Abu Dhabi and Team Brunel for the top spot, not letting their 2-hour 'pit stop' phase them. May they have some strong and favourable east winds and may they come back stronger than ever.
What does it meant to change a rudder on a Volvo Ocean 65 like this? Well first of all its not something you want or necessarily expect to have to do – but you know it might be necessary. For this reason all the boats carry a spare rudder, in addition to the two that are fitted to the boat through bearings in the back part of the hull.
Why two?
Well modern race boats are very wide to give them more power (and therefore speed), and as a result the traditional system of old with one rudder in the middle of the boat no longer works because it would be out of the water half the time. And the rudder is the same as the wheels turning a car around a corner – losing it is like the steering cable snapping on a car! So we have two...one of which is in the water most the time, the other as soon as the boat heels, spends a lot of time in the air. Since the rudder, along with the keel, are the only bits of the boat under the water for long, if the boat sails over an object, its going to hit one or other or both. With Dongfeng racing hard and fast at 17 to 20 knots (fastest yet in the race), an impact with a solid object – a UFO (unidentified floating object not a spaceship!) – can cause a lot of damage. In this case, the rudder was totally broken in two, quite close to the hull. Initial inspection confirmed no water was coming in the boat, and for now there is no apparent damage to the keel or hull either.
So...there we are, now the rudder that was helping us steer the boat is no longer there, what next?
Well an inevitable wipeout – just what you car would do if the steering wheel was no longer connected to the wheels! The immediate action is to try to get the boat on the other gybe (i.e wind coming from the other side of the boat), so that it is heeling the other way, and the good remaining rudder now doing the work. You can see if you rewind the tracker that this happened pretty quickly after the collision, shortly after 0200 UTC (Greenwich Mean Time). Now its everyone on deck and awake and prepare a tricky manoeuvre that the guys have done before in their careers and had practised as a team together on the way to Alicante pre-start, albeit in daytime. First they had to decide if they would just fit the spare rudder (all the teams have to carry one) as an emergency rudder (attached on the stern/back of the boat, outside the hull, as a way to get control back), or to a full replacement – requiring the old rudder to be dropped out of its bearing in to the water, and the new rudder being pushed under the boat by a diver and up the hole back in to the bearing. The latter would give Dongfeng, if the bearing hadn't been damaged at all, full performance again. The former would compromise the control and therefore speed of the boat, but should be quicker to do.
The boys on Dongfeng chose the permanent solution, and fortunately the broken rudder came out quite easily (often its stuck as the collision can deform what is already a tight fit), and with some good work by Thomas Rouxel in the diving suit in the water, and some great coordinated crew work (remember its the middle of the night, pitch black and the boat is rolling around). Before doing the operation they needed to drop the A3, the biggest of the downwind sails at the front of the boat, slow the boat down right to a stop by dropping the sails, in order for Thomas to be able to do manage this in the water (if not imagine trying to do it as a water skier behind the boat!). So new rudder in, need to secure it down below, tighten up the housing that holds it in place (Kevin gets to work in the video)...ok guys, ready to go! Rehoist all the sails, gybe back to the favoured direction that we were on before, and get the show back on the road. About 2 hours from start to finish as Martin comments – and we are as proud as he says the team are onboard... Although they had no positions onboard at this time, they had seen Abu Dhabi and Vestas go past them... it would be a few hours later before an official poll would reach the boat to confirm they had slipped to 3rd, just a mile ahead of Vestas... and as we know on land but they don't know yet, a great recovery to regain 2nd place. But it might be a bit harder to retake that lead from the race favourites Abu Dhabi – gutting for the boys on Dongfeng after stretching out an 18 mile lead just before this happened – but all part of ocean racing.
And we passed this big test with flying colours!