Nearly home

Bouwe Bekking reports as Telefonica nears port once again

A few more hours to go and then we have this qualifier under our belt. Not bad for a boat that only 14 days ago went in the water. The wind conditions couldn’t have been better and the nearly full moon made sailing at night with new boat easy.

The deck layout is fantastic, everything in the right spot, no changes there and most important we can drag the sails around, without having to lift them, saving our backs. As important, we have a great bunch of guys, all very talented and always thinking positive. Not much happened last night, got chased by a thunderstorm but we out ran it. We have taken it “easy”, cracked our sheets, so speeds went up and now we are eating up the miles faster.

We all don’t forget the person who made this all possible: a huge thanks to Pedro Campos, he is unbelievable when it comes to sponsor treatment and how to convince them that sailing is a very good way to get return for their investment. There are not many people in our sport who have been so successful in raising money as Pedro. He is sublime to invest from the youngest in our sport, like Optimist sailors, then the next step the Olympic sailors and finally the Volvo Ocean Race. An ultimate thanks to all our sponsors and the city of Alicante, without them we wouldn’t be here.

We start our little recovery programme for the guys once we are ashore, and then they will have a couple of days off, before we are getting into two boat testing again.

Cheers,

Bouwe Bekking

Team site: http://www.equipotelefonica.es