A gripe from illbruck

Crewman Jamie Gale gives his view on collisions with Swedish boats

I must make a point of checking the crew lists for each leg more closely in the future as apparently Assa Abloy has snuck on some old match race legend from the 12meter era when in was common place to cover, cover, and if in doubt, cover some more.

We have just spent the entire morning trying to get around Assa, who to their credit has made it extremely difficult and costly for us. The guys on Tyco much have been caught half way between rubbing their hands together with glee and being doubled over with laughter watching the two of us alternate between pinching above closehauled to soaking as deep as possible as we tried to break through a cover that Dennis Conner would have been proud of, losing to the fleet all the while!

If we worked 20 degrees higher of course, Assa would go 25 degrees higher to block us, and when we cracked off a similar amount and had a go to leeward of them, it would take only a couple of seconds before they eased sheets and reached down over us.

With there not being much between the speeds of the boats in these conditionsit took us all morning before they were finally a little late coming down and we got through underneath them.

To us on illbruck it was really surprising to see the mindset on Assa, that they would be prepared to lose so much to the fleet to keep one boat behind them. That sort of behaviour is understandable when short course racing, or when the finish is close, but with 4,000 odd miles to go to Miami it just seemed a little crazy.

Personally, I think Assa gave us a glimpse into the sort of narrow minded 'little picture' thinking that got them into so much trouble earlier in the race. Seems to me that a boat with good speed like they have would be wiser to pay more attention to winning the war, rather than each battle along the way.

Another team that hasn't exactly won us over this leg has been SEB. What can one say? First day of a 4,500 mile leg, broad daylight, 12 knots of wind. If there is an excuse for misjudging a dip and hitting a starboard tack boat in the manner that they did then someone had better remind me of it! It is another of those things that sometimes happens in one design racing when boats are fighting for inches, but in this race, with this far to go you are going to have a hard time convincing anyone on illbruck that someone on SEB doesn't need a good tune up!

At the time of the crash I had my head up the underside of the mainsheet pod when there was a huge bang from the stern of the boat and my head bounced around like a pinball between then main winch bevel box and the back side of the hydro valves. Fortunately, apart from that and the helmsman being sent flying nobody was hurt.

As for the boat, the port pushpit was smashed, and there is a lot of cracking in the port quarter hull. We are not sure if the aft padeye is still going to be strong enough to hold the load of a sail, or indeed if the cracked hull will support the padeye, as the worst of the damage is right around it.

We have attempted to shore up the area as best we can, but so far we haven't needed to use a sail that sheets there, so we won't really know the true extent of the damage until we have to fly such a sail. Hopefully it will be ok as if we can't sheet a sail from there we are very limited as to what sails we can fly on some points of sail.

Regardless, we are enjoying some beautiful sailing conditions and dodging icebergs in the Southern Ocean seems a long time ago. It seems totally normal for this race to have five other boats in sight, and the racing is as tough as ever. As we approach the tricky conditions around the equator once again, I think it will be the navigators sweating a little more than the rest of us as they earn those big bucks!

Jamie Gale
illbruck Challenge