Splish Splash Time for Volvo Top Three Leg 5 Boats - Volvo Ocean Race Update

All three teams in Itajaí will have their boats back in the water by Monday afternoon after intense work by the shore crews to prepare for the DHL In-Port Race on Saturday and the start of Leg 6 the following day.

Photo: Maria Muina/Team Telefonica

Team Telefónica launched on Monday, joining PUMA Ocean Racing powered by BERG after the Leg 5 winners were first back in the water the previous day. Groupama sailing team were due to join them on Monday afternoon.

Horacio Carabelli, shore team manager for Telefónica, said the overall race leaders had made good inroads into their schedule of work and were on track to be 100 per cent by the weekend.

Photo: Maria Muina/Team Telefonica

“We are about 80 per cent of the way to being ready,” he said. “We have plenty of things to do but we are in a position that we can go sailing today.

“Everything was taken off the boat so the crew need to check everything, the keel system, all the halyard locks on the mast, electronics...it is a long list. There is some new structure so we need to also check how the boat is behaving. All in all we are pretty happy,” Carabelli confirmed.

Photo: Ian Roman/Volvo Ocean Race

Groupama’s shore crew were this morning still preparing their replacement mast which was flown in from the Netherlands. Shore crew boss Ben Wright said the French crew planned to go sailing on Tuesday to check over and tune the new rig.

“We will put the mast in when the boat is in the water today and get ourselves tidied up and set up for to go for a sail tomorrow around midday,” he said.

Photo: Ian Roman/Volvo Ocean Race

“This is the first generation rig that we launched the boat with and did all the sea trials for six or eight weeks in France. Like with all these things, the object of the exercise is that the second one was better, so most of the changes we are making are in the detailing, how it functions, how the reefs work and so on, that we are trying to replicate from the other mast.

“There are always a lot of details to sort out. You can never do enough -- it’s a race boat so it is never finished. Tomorrow’s sailing will all be about making sure everything works -- locks, reefs everything, so it will be a longish afternoon out on the water.

Photo: Ian Roman/Volvo Ocean Race

“We need to tune the rig and set it up properly so there may be some to-ing and fro-ing. We may need to come in for a short while to do some dock tuning and then go back out again.”

With the PUMA crew arriving back Itajaí today, shore manager Tim Hacket said his team were focused on having the boat ready to sail on Tuesday.

“We are just continuing to get the boat ready,” he said. “The sailors are back today and are heading out sailing tomorrow. We are getting all the gear back on board as we launched yesterday. Nothing too frantic, just normal preparation for a sailing day.

“It’s been a steady pace for us. We have been pretty fortunate with the job list so it has all been good. There have been plenty of little jobs that we hadn’t been able to do at other stopovers because they were so short, that we have been able to take care of now. Repainting the decks with new non-skid was a big one.

“Not everything is 100 per cent complete and there are plenty of jobs we can work on at night but the boat is ready for them to go sailing for sure.”

Volvo Ocean Race Media