Stamm does it again

The Swiss skipper caught up with The Daily Sail after his first luncheon ashore

Swiss Open 60 skipper Bernard Stamm once again sailed a near perfect race to take line honours on Around Alone's third leg between Cape Town and Tauranga. It is now three out of three for Stamm in this race, but as previous singlehanded round the world events have proved it is still far too early to assume with two legs remaining, that Stamm has Around Alone in the bag.

Disaster nearly struck Stamm on the approach to the finish line as he sailed his Bobst Group-Armor Lux into the teeth of a gale. "It was very rough, but it was very difficult for the ship after 7,000 miles when we had to tack in the strong wind – it was very bad," he told The Daily Sail after he'd hoovered down his first square meal in 25 days, following his arrival.

"I got some delamination on the front of the ship, just from yesterday," Stamm contined. "It was not very serious, but we’ve got quite a lot of work to fix it." The delamination was caused by the beamy Open 60 pounding into the waves. "They were very high and short waves, it was a ship attacker!"

More of an immediate problem was when in the big conditions the boat's steering mechanism broke. Bobst Group-Armor Lux has twin rudders, but a single tiller. As the photo below shows, the tiller attaches to a stock with the quadrant at its base. From here two bars attach the quadrant to the rudders, while the autopilot ram is also attached to the quadrant.

Stamm said the attachment to the hull below the quadrant had broken and the stock had started to come away from the hull. He had managed to repair it, but later the attachment between the tiller at the top of the stock had started to break. He was able to steer using the autopilot in 'tiller' mode, and his timing was perfect - the rudder came away from the stock completely just as he was crossing the finish line.



The 7,125 mile leg from Cape Town took the fleet across the bottom of the Indian Ocean, to the south of Tasmania, across the Tasman Sea and down the northeastern coast of New Zealand's North Island to the finish line in Tauranga.

In the first few days of the leg Stamm was locked in a match race with Thierry Dubois on Solidaires. Dubois had taken a more easterly course once past the Cape of Good Hope, while Stamm stuck close to the Great Circle.

Once again Stamm applied the tactics that worked for him on the first leg from New York. "It is easier to be in control when you are in front than when you are in the back. I took this leg like the first leg between New York and Torbay – I tried to reach first place as quickly as possible to keep the wind longer than the others and it seemed to work..."
The first Southern Ocean depression struck the fleet in the middle of the first week and Stamm said that during it he had seen 55 knots. While this was a serious amount of wind, Stamm said they had been quite lucky with the conditions in the south - it could have been far far worse.

Towards the end of the first week the boats were well into the Roaring 40s and between Prince Edward Island and Crozet, Stamm split gybes with Dubois and headed further south and was able to pick up more breeze and extend his lead to 150 miles. Passing just to the north of the Kerguelen Island he again broke to the south and as he and Dubois subsequently bore north east to cross the obligatory waypoint line he had pulled out his lead to 250 miles.

Stamm makes out it was closer than it appeared. "I think Thierry 500 miles away from Tasmania he could win the leg," said Stamm. For some reason once past the 'wayline' Dubois once again broke to the north, as Stamm headed for the high latitudes to the south of Tasmania.

While there doesn't seem to be a great deal of difference in pace downwind between his boat and Dubois' Solidaires is seems that Stamm was smarter in getting his 60 to the right piece of ocean to make best use of the impending weather conditions. Nowhere was this more evident than the way they tackled the Tasman Sea.

While Stamm gave Tasmania a wide berth, Dubois was much further north. At the time a high pressure system was parked over the Tasman Sea and the forecast showed it slowly drifting east, potentially rolling over the top of anyone trying to get to its east. By tacking the high pressure from further south Stamm says he was able to keep the wind from the high pressure all the way up to Cape Reinga at the top of New Zealand.

To avoid repeating the disaster that occurred to Mike Golding's Team Group 4 in the last Around Alone, Stamm said he gave Cape Reinga a two mile berth. At the time Dubois was stuck in the high and Stamm had extended his lead to almost 500 miles, only to lose it again partially while he dealt with the strong headwinds and his rudder difficulties coming down the coast to the finish.

Stamm said that he had not had much sleep since Tasmania as crossing the Tasman Sea he was concentrating on not getting entangled in the high, while sleep had been impossible for the last 48 hours. "In the low at the finish - I couldn’t sleep because it was too rough."

Considering it is summer in New Zealand, Stamm arrived in the most appalling conditions. "It was very good but the weather is very poor – poor visibility, but there were a lot of people here and they are very friendly," he said of his arrival.

He now has a month in New Zealand prior to the 9 February restart. The boat will be coming out of the water to fix the delamination and the steering. However he also hopes to find time to go to Auckland to hook up with his fellow Swiss sailors of Ernesto Bertarelli's Alinghi team.