movistar underway soon

Temporary repairs to bomb doors nearly completed for Spanish Volvo Ocean Race team

“We will be back on the water this afternoon”, movistar skiper Bouwe Bekking announced today from Ushuaia at the Southern tip of South America. Even through extreme weather conditions, the repair effort has been going non-stop since the team’s arrival in the early hours of the morning to the capital of Argentina's province of Tierra del Fuego, Ushuaia. Winds of up to 30 knots and fierce rain have threatened to dog the efforts of the movistar shore crew, and experts from the Spanish Challenge to the America’s Cup 2007, Desafio Espanol 2007, who have been flown in to repair the damage to this Volvo Open 70.

Bekking describes the situation: “As we had suspected, the fairing (bomb doors) between the keel and the hull had broken off, and this had led to our taking on water. Once the boat was out of the water, we could see that there was also some light damage to the rudder and the hull, which was almost certainly caused by the fairing breaking off. We’ve performed repairs that will allow us to sail to Rio, where more rigorous investigation and repair will be done to get the boat back into optimum condition for the next leg.

Although movistar is technically returning to the competition, in practice their journey will be focussed on reaching their destination, Brazil, and as such, they will be sailing at a very different pace to the rest of the fleet.

“We will be sailing with the keel halfway so as not to exert to much pressure around the area until we are able to perform more in-depth repairs.” Says Bekking. “Obviously, in these kind of conditions our speed will be a lot slower than the rest of the fleet, but we should be in Rio by the 13th.”