Abu Dhabi Yacht Set to Rejoin Volvo Ocean Race
Ian Walker's Abu Dhabi Ocean Racing team looks set to rejoin the Volvo Ocean Race on Wednesday after the shore crew worked around the clock to repair their dismasted boat Azzam following a devastating first 24 hours in the world's toughest professional sailing event.
The 39,000-nautical mile, nine-month race claimed two victims on the first day after launching the opening leg between Alicante, Spain and Cape Town on Saturday with Walker's and Team Sanya representing China both forced to suspend racing.
Azzam's mast snapped in three places after crashing into a monster wave and she was forced to limp back to Alicante overnight for urgent repairs on Sunday morning.
Walker, a twice-Olympic silver medalist from Britain, told Agence France Presse on Tuesday: "I want to get back in the race in the next 24 hours if I can because the fleet aren’t getting away that fast and it wouldn’t be impossible to catch them up.
"All being well we might get the mast in tonight and then off tomorrow morning.
"This is our last mast so the last thing we want to do is anything un-seamanlike, go out to sea and then find we have the same problem again or another problem then that would put us out of the race. So the stakes are high."
Sanya is thought to have struck an object in the Mediterranean heading for Gibraltar on Sunday morning, causing a huge hole in her hull.
She pulled out of the leg officially late on Monday night but, because of the points scoring system in the race, mathematically can still win the event as each of the nine legs counts towards an overall tally.
Skipper Mike Sanderson, a race winner in 1993-94 and 2005-06, said the team would have to accomplish one month's work in one week to remodel the bow and have Sanya race-ready in Cape Town.
"Our time’s extremely close, our boat's got to get on a ship before the weekend if we’ve got any chance of getting it fixed in Cape Town," he said.
"Even if that all goes to plan we only have 10 days from when she arrives in Cape Town on a ship to getting her ready for the in-port race there."
It could be that the scale of Sanya's logistical challenge means that she skips the second leg too in order to be fully ready for the third leg which starts early in the new year from Abu Dhabi.
Meanwhile, the remaining four boats in the race were regularly swapping the lead on Tuesday morning after encountering light winds in the Atlantic.
Telefonica was leading by 3 nautical miles from Groupama (France), with Puma (U.S.) third and Camper fourth, 26 miles behind the Spanish front-runner.
The leg to Cape Town is expected to take 18-21 days and covers 6,500 nautical miles so in sailing terms the four boats are closely bunched.