All four teams are sailing deep into the Roaring 40s.
The leader, Team Holcim-PRB, has made a dive to become the boat furthest to the south. This is because the team keeps nosing into lighter conditions ahead.
Biotherm has sliced nearly 100 miles off their lead over the past three days, and this is their best defence.
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- GUYOT environnement – Team Europe retires from leg 3
- And it’s been a stressful time on 11th Hour Racing Team.
Benjamin Dutreux’s GUYOT environnement – Team Europe have confirmed they will pull out of Leg 3 and focus on making repairs to their boat to be ready to rejoin the race in Itajaí, Brazil.
After the non-destructive testing (NDT) of the yacht, no further damage was found apart from the delaminated area on the port side of the hull in the cabin area, but the repair will still take some time.
The outer carbon layer of the hull will be cut open and the Nomex core removed. The inner carbon layer will remain. The honeycomb structure will be replaced by a foam sandwich core, which will be glued in place.
After gluing in the sandwich foam, the open area will be laminated again with carbon fibres. Filling, sanding and lacquering work should complete the process by Sunday, before the yacht is likely to be back in the water on Tuesday 14 March next week.
Meanwhile, the sailing team is preparing for the transfer and the next stages. The calculation went . . .
‘In Itajaí, we still have 60 percent of the race to go. We lose 20 percent now, but then we will be ready for the remaining 60 percent.’
And on 11th Hour Racing Team, after making repairs to two headsails, the team discovered damage to its rudders during a routine inspection.
Jack (Bouttell) looked at the windward rudder and found a crack.
It was decent, from front to back, midway down on the outboard side.
Then another nearer the top, much smaller, but also closer to the ‘root’, where the rudder meets the boat; a point of importance because losing the tip of a rudder is one thing but the whole rudder is another.
They then checked the port rudder.
No long crack midway down, but a bigger one at the top in the same place as the starboard rudder.
It’s been a bit of a whirlwind since then, but here’s the summary.
After taking our own onboard observations and conferring with our shore team plus the rudders’ designers in France, it was determined that the starboard rudder was the worse off of the two because of its second, longer crack.
They chose to put their spare rudder in its place.
So the starboard rudder came out, and the spare went in, all quite seamlessly . . .
Positions at 16:00 UTC 8 March 2023
1st Holcim – PRB DTF 9504 nm
2nd Biaotherm DTL 376 nm
3rd Team Malizia DTL 418 nm
4th 11th Hour Racing Team DTL 445 nm
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