Premature end

Crewman Paul Larsen recounts how Raw Nerve's Round Australia attempt came to an abrupt halt

(21/7/02 23:30 AEST 27º38'S 156º45'E) by Paul

Well ah, I guess that one goes down as a bit of a shocker. We'd all been waiting for that promised wind for quite some time and the stage was set for a great blast from Australia's eastern corner to her Northern tip - that is, until the incident.

We'd been heading slightly east of north on our way up the NSW coast and had managed to get separated  from the coast by some two hundred miles. We had spent the last day and a half sailing upwind, sometimes in lumpy seas but there was always the promise of a SW front which would shoot us up the coast to the SE trades up the Queensland coast.

We held the favoured starboard tack for most of the time as it gave us our best northing, strongest winds and the current seemed favourable out off the continental shelf. We could always head back in when the wind swung later. The wind had eased and the sea state flattened allowing the front to catch us which it eventually did mid-morning on the 21st.

Down below I could feel the speed building even in the silence of the pod. Everyone was getting a bit more lively as the favourable conditions filled in. I had one eye on the laptop watching the numbers as I pulled on my foul weather gear in preparation for my watch.

Stuart was on the helm when I came on decks and once again the water was flying out the back. He was loving it even commenting on how he didn't want to hand over the wheel. When I asked him how she was feeling he just took both hands off the wheel and held them high in order to show how well balanced the boat was.

With full main and the number one headsail there was no doubt that she was barred up. With dead flat seas and 20 knots of wind now aft of the beam Raw Nerve was sitting on a steady 20 knots and heading smack on course for Swains Reef where we would make our choice for going inside or outside the Great Barrier Reef. I took over the wheel and immediately started looking up and down a few degrees for the 'sweetspot'. I got big Bill to ride shotgun on the traveller just in case it all got a bit much and the throttle needed to be eased. No surging, no pounding, just steady numbers.  Sweet. Secretly our target for this run was to halve the existing record and this was just what the doctor ordered....until the incident!

The incident commenced with a bang, as they often do, and then things went much more slowly as the rig gracefully fell over the side breaking in three places on the way. The boat, of course, swiftly came to a halt like a horse that's just tossed its rider and stops for a casual nibble on the grass a few meters away. Oh no, not this... What the hell did we do to deserve this?

I hate the sound of carbon shattering as it means so much more than simply a boat breaking. It means broken dreams and goals. It questions your time, effort and expenditure. It means that you have to do all the work again that you have just completed all but for one small detail which is quite often out of your own hands anyway - sigh, it just plain sucks!

While the troops rallied I walked straight over to the offending piece. It was a failure of a swivel terminal on the end of the new Kevlar shrouds which alone take the side and forward loads of the rig. In the not too distant future racing boats will completely do away with metal load bearing fittings on the standing rigging. Some already have and about time too.

So at the start it all looks too big a mess to possibly contain but then, like all good shit fights, you begin, persevere and overcome. Eventually after some good hard work involving all the disciplines of swimming, heaving, dragging, cursing, cutting and teamwork we actually managed to retrieve all three parts of the mast which we stowed on decks not to mention both the sails which only received minor damage. In fact I think we actually managed to retrieve everything including the B+G masthead unit so all in all the boat came out not too bad.

The distraction from the disappointment was however only temporary as the next job was to start the engines and motor for Brisbane some 200 odd miles to the west. The winds that were supposed to be propelling us at a great rate up the coast were now working against us as was the building sea state. It became obvious that the fuel wasn't going to get us there alone so we set to rigging a jury rig .

This was accomplished by laying the lower section of mast face down and forward so that the boom 'gooseneck' was alongside the maststep. We the placed the boom back on the gooseneck and with a great deal of effort hoisted it in place of the mast. It was just the right height upon which to hoist the Storm jib and this in turn provided enough power to enable us to turn off one engine for the long slog to port. And that is where we are now.

Credit to all the crew for just getting on with it and doing a great job of damage control. Credit also to Martyn Riley, owner/skipper, for almost immediately placing the whole thing in the temporary setback category.

We all feel for the effort and passion that he has put into this. Stuart Bloomfield, the boats designer and 'Aazza', Aaron Haigh who built and modified the boat were both on board for the ride. Why such a key fitting failed is anyone's guess at this stage as the boat was just out there strutting its stuff.

Martyn has vowed to return and I hope to hell he does. It would be a pretty cool record to hold on an Australian designed and built boat with an all Australian crew. The course is as challenging as any and the record is ripe to be smashed. I know that it will figure again in my sailing future. I can only hope that it will be as much fun with as good a bunch of blokes to go sailing with.

GETUPIT, Larso.

[Perhaps 'Get It Up' would be more appropriate, Ed]

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