On the mammoth stage of the Ocean Race, all teams also have to deliver world-class technical performances. Team Malizia's mast repair, in which Will Harris and Rosalin Kuiper each spent hours performing great deeds at a rig height of 28 metres, remains unforgotten. A new check by Rosalin Kuiper at the weekend showed that the mast of the "Malizia - Seaexplorer" is still in good condition and the repair was successful.
Charlie Enright's US team 11th Hour Racing has pulled off a repair marathon of multiple kinds over the past few days: cracks in the bow of the boat, a badly damaged mainsail and a crack in the rudder have put the entire crew under enormous strain.
Justine Mettraux: "It's cool to have 'Mālama' back!"
Skills in the areas of sanding, gluing, flexing, sewing and laminating were in demand. The "MacGyver" in the 11th Hour Racing team is Jack Bouttell. The experienced offshore and former Figaro sailor, who lives in Concarneau, is known in the scene for his technical talents. In the 2017/2018 Volvo Ocean Race, he was one of the winners in Charles Caudrelier's Dongfeng Race Team. Bouttell's team praised the Australian-born crew mate with the nickname "Swiss Army Knife" as the hero of the extensive repair work.
Now the crew has sent impressive pictures of the labour of love on board the "Mālama", which had turned into a shipyard over the course of several days. "We've done a lot of work in the last 36 hours to get everything back in order," reported Justine Mettraux from Switzerland at the end of the challenging weekend. Everything went well. Jack Bouttell really did a great job repairing a lot of tricky points! It's cool to have 'Malama' back - now with the whole sail again!"
At latitude 51 degrees south, the winds in the Southern Ocean are still rather light on the 22nd day of the Queen's leg. The Ocean Race quartet is still close together. While Boris Herrmann's Team Malizia led on Sunday evening, Team Holcim - PRB and 11th Hour Racing alternated in the lead at the start of the week on Monday morning. In this light wind phase, the positions change with almost every new hour report.
Just under a week to go until Cape Horn ...
"There's an area of high pressure in front of us and a low behind us. We're a bit stuck in between," said "Biotherm" skipper Paul Meilhat, describing the situation the day before. According to the latest calculations, the field will reach Cape Horn, around 2,500 nautical miles away, on 26 or 27 March. They are expected to arrive in Itajaí, Brazil, in the first week of April.
