Three realisations remain after the Tour de Force on leg four of the Ocean Race: firstly, two mast breaks brutally decimated the already small fleet. Secondly, the pre-start favourites from the US team 11th Hour Racing, who had been plagued by technical setbacks until then, were finally able to win a leg on time on course for their home port of Newport. And thirdly, the unexpected course of the stage has ensured that the battle for overall victory is once again very tense.
But first things first: The 5500-nautical-mile leg from Itajaí to the East American sailing stronghold of Newport got off to a promising start after mastering the Cape Horn King's Stage. In an attacking mood, the teams repeatedly chased each other for the lead in the opening phase. The fleet was close together when the first shock news came from the South Atlantic on 27 April: Mast breakage on leader "Holcim - PRB"!
The 1st mast break
The cause of the technical knockout blow was a broken top swivel. The rig came off the top in three pieces and brutally ended the leg for skipper Escoffier and his crew. The immediate search for the best possible solution to continue the race turned into a race against the clock. Team Holcim - PRB had the mastless Imoca shipped from Rio de Janeiro to the next port of call. The class association's only replacement mast was sent - also by freighter - from Lorient across the Atlantic to Newport. Skipper Escoffier hopes that in the best-case scenario, his team will have 48 hours in the American stage port to successfully marry boat and mast before the starting signal for the fifth stage is given on 21 May.
Three days after the end for Team Holcim - PRB, the duel between 11th Hour Racing and Team Malizia for the stage win manifested itself at the head of the decimated fleet on 30 April, while the Biotherm and Guyot teams fell back. 16 lead changes over eleven days testify to a duel at eye level in which each crew had its moments. 11th Hour Racing's on-board reporter Amory Ross: "You could see that we both had our strengths and weaknesses. It was scary how close it was. On the last night we had 27 or 28 knots downwind - that's a strength of theirs and kind of an Achilles heel of ours. We were fighting against the clock and hoping to get far enough west and north into the lighter upwind conditions, which is our strength. It was a fight to the finish."
- Mast breakage at Team Holcim - PRB!
- "A shock for all of us" - Malizia in solidarity with Holcim - PRB
- The crazy race for the replacement mast for "Holcim - PRB"
- "Pan Pan" - the Holcim mast-breaking video - PRB
- Team Holcim under distress. What happens now?
- For the overall victory - Holcim - PRB gives up stage four
The 2nd mast break
Before the decision was made, there was another shocking announcement: A broken mast on "Guyot"! While 11th Hour Racing and Team Malizia also had to cope with a nasty storm shortly before their showdown, its furious force had increased by the time they met the stragglers. The unfavourable mix of winds between 35 and 45 knots, gusts of more than 50 knots and the effects of the Gulf Stream had prompted Team Guyot to adopt the most defensive sail configuration possible: three reefs in the mainsail, no headsail. Nevertheless, the rig came down from above in the dark night. The cause initially remained unclear. With the exception of a four-metre-long piece of mast foot, the crew cut away everything that could have further demolished the already damaged hull in the storm and endangered the crew. A J3, the J2, the mainsail and the shrouds also went overboard.
For Team Guyot, the accident is a disaster. They quickly realise what co-skipper Robert Stanjek puts into his first spontaneous words: "We can't get a mast here until the next stage start. That's completely utopian." Skipper Benjamin Dutreux visibly struggled for words at the first press conference from on board the saddest team in the Ocean Race when asked about the future of his team and then said: "It's not easy, we're just a small campaign."
Whether and when a comeback is possible for the long-suffering team, which has already had to abandon the third stage of the race with damage, remains to be seen, despite encouragement and many offers of help from other teams. Tight time frames before and after the upcoming stages as well as scarce financial resources are diametrically opposed to the will and desire of Guyot Environment - Team Europe. A quick solution like the one in the Holcim - PRB case is not in sight for the time being. The mast shattered all hopes of a high-calibre and worthy second half of the round-the-world race.
Serious setback for German ambitions
On the German side, team co-manager Jens Kuphal, Robert Stanjek and also Annie Lush and Phillip Kasüske had travelled a long and thorny path with Offshore Team Germany to realise their big dream of participating in the Ocean Race in cooperation with the French team led by 'Guyot' skipper Ben Dutreux. The winning coup in the Ocean Race Europe 2021 gave them a big boost. "We fought for seven or eight years," says Robert Stanjek, explaining the extent of the overall commitment.
But once the starting gun went off, the once so magically enticing challenge for Team Guyot and its seven-year-old but tried and tested Imoca turned into a nightmare stage by stage. "We had a lot of bad luck on the material side," says Stanjek, summarising the core problem. In detail: "On stage two it was the A2 and the fractional zero. On stage three: delamination and abandonment." On leg four, the trim line for the foil first failed, throwing the crew, which had even been leading and performing strongly in the meantime, back heavily, before the mast breakage muted the team like a vicious bolt from the night sky.
The battle for the stage win
Almost parallel to the "Guyot" mast breakage, the preliminary decision was made in the top duel of the fourth leg, as it would later turn out. On the night of 8 May, which was also unfortunate for German fans, Team Malizia got stuck under a band of cloud with no wind and lost 25 nautical miles to the rushing Americans within a few hours. Skipper Will Harris, Rosalin Kuiper, navigator Nico Lunven and Christopher Pratt never gave up after that and came within seven nautical miles of 11th Hour Racing in the flat winds on the morning of the decision off Newport. But that was as close as they could get in the wind, which freshened up again at the end, allowing the US local heroes to race to a highly acclaimed home victory after a great battle. After 17 eventful days, 2 hours, 26 minutes and 41 seconds, a half-hour lead over Team Malizia was enough for triumph at the finish. Skipper Charlie Enright, who wanted this victory so badly - "On a scale of zero to a hundred? A thousand!" - was jubilant in his home harbour: "That was wild! Like a film script. The last 24 hours were the longest of my life." His trimmer Francesca Clapcich, Olympian and 49er FX world champion, stated: "It was our turn to win. We had worked too hard not to do it. We had to do it. And we did it."
Boris Herrmann, who took a break on this leg to fulfil other team duties in his home port of Hamburg, was also happy with second place: "I'm very proud of the crew! From my point of view, they did a perfect job and delivered excellent seamanship. We saw sport at a high level. The kind of yacht racing you thought was only possible with one-design boats." Regarding two mast breaks on just one leg, Herrmann said: "You can't conclude from this that the Imoca class has unstable masts and that there is a fundamental problem. These are statistical deviations, an anomaly. Especially to the chagrin of Team Guyot, who I feel incredibly sorry for. Especially with regard to Robert Stanjek and Phillip Kasüske, it would be a huge loss for the German fan community to no longer have them in the race. We very much hope to keep them."
Exciting classification
On the sporting side of the Ocean Race, the result of the fourth leg has brought new tension to the battle for overall victory ahead of the transatlantic leg from Newport to the Danish sailing city of Aarhus: Team Holcim - PRB defends its lead with 19 points ahead of the tied teams 11th Hour Racing and Malizia (both 18) in second and third place, despite having lost the stage. Because tiebreaks in the Ocean Race are determined using the harbour race classification and 11th Hour Racing leads this secondary classification, the Americans are just ahead of Team Malizia ahead of the remaining three legs. Boris Herrmann's battle cry: "Now it's getting really exciting. We're going to sail close to the wind and go all out." The fifth leg beckons with double points and has the potential to shake up the classification once again.
Until then, stage four will be remembered as a mast and heartbreaker. In terms of sailing, it was highly demanding. The sailors had to master many transitions between different weather systems over two and a half weeks. On top of that, the finale was hit by one of the most violent storms to hit this edition since its start on 15 January in Alicante. Amory Ross from 11th Hour Racing said: "This storm is pushing the red line. It's terrifying." The high school of navigation, boat handling, strategy and tactics was required. The assumption circulating before the start of the leg that the Southern Ocean queen "Malizia - Seaexplorer" might be too heavy and sluggish to keep up with the light-footed "Malama" on the stretch from the South to the North Atlantic did not materialise. Team Malizia has obviously learnt to make its boat, which is only ten months old, work in all conditions.
Tatjana Pokorny
Sports reporter
