La Taberna del Puerto

[Ocell (3NY)]

A poco de llegar a la meta te pasa esto, es para cortársela.....



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Another kind of finish
As Simone Bianchetti's second placed Tiscali dismasts prior to crossing Newport finish line
One of the more unorthadox finishes to an ocean yacht race was that of Simone Bianchetti's Tiscali who finished this morning in second place on the final leg in Around Alone. Assuming Thierry Dubois finishes this afternoon ahead of Emma Richards, Bianchetti will have taken third place overall in the singlehanded round the world race.
Having played catch up throughout this round the world race after his dismasting on the second leg, the Italian skipper finally had the bit between his teeth for the final leg and during the early stages was in close contention for the lead with eventual winner Bernard Stamm.

But 10 days into the leg, Tiscali was beset with yet more mast problems. This time it was the mast track that was preventing the headboard car from dropping down the track. He could put in one reef, but the headboard car would not drop low enough to take a second reef.

Over the course of the next two days Bianchetti says he made 11 trips up the mast as he attempted to replace the damaged piece of track with a piece he had cut out from the bottom of the track. Despite this repair he was still unable to drop the main.

Fortunately in the light conditions that proliferated in this leg as the boats sailed north up the Atlantic from Brazil across the Equator and Doldrums to Newport, Rhode Island, this was not a problem. Bianchetti says he sailed a perfect course, and made good gains sailing around the bulge in Brazil by taking a more westerly inshore track. He tenaciously held onto second.

However the big conditions Bianchetti was worried about materialised within 48 hours of him finishing. To get to Newport the boats had to cross the Gulf Stream and at this point Bianchetti said the wind was howling.

"The problem was coming from the mainsail track," recounted a super-exhausted Bianchetti upon his arrival here in Newport. "The wind was coming in at around 50 knots, normally 45 knots for a couple of hours and when I tried to take the main down, the main doesn't come down. I took off the halayrd but it doesn't come down. And normally when you have 45 knots of wind and 100sqm of sail the carbon fibre don't like this kind of stress."

At around 04:30 this morning, with just 30 miles to go to get to the finish line, the top of the mast broke. Bianchetti said this came as no surprise. Just minutes earlier he had phoned Mauro Piani, head of his shore team saying that he was worried about the rig. At the time he was sailing with one reef and he had been down below when the breakage occurred. The noise, he said, was just incredible.

Using tough Spectra sails built for the Southern Ocean, the weakest link was the mast which snapped neatly above the top spreader. "It is a little expensive to spend 400,000 Euros to take one reef! After it was the right square of sails!"

After the incident Bianchetti wasn't certain if he could finish. The top mast had broken off to leeward and was still being held up by rigging, the head of the main flailing in the wind.

"It was dark and I was very tired and just in the morning I saw it was possible to arrive," said Bianchetti. "Off the coast the waves were very short and vertical. The boat jumps so much I was not sure I was going to arrive."

It wasn't until dawn about an hour after the incident that Bianchetti realised that the top mast was holding and that if he sailed gingerly he might be able to make it to the line.

"I immediately started to secure the mast to see if I could save it. If I could keep that section of the mast in the boat I knew I would be able to make the finish. In any case I knew I was going to make the finish even if I had to swim towing the boat."

He said later that he owed this to his shore team and to his sponsor, the Italian internet company.

Tiscali eventually limped across the line at 08:01:30 EST (12:01:30GMT) this morning.

On his arrival at the Newport Shipyard, where the boats are based, Bianchetti looked utterly shattered. "It was impossible to sleep this leg," he said. "When you sleep something changes - you know? When you sleep you need to tack. I think now no but in the next 2-3 days, maybe I need to have one month to think about the future [his concentration drifting off]. To take a moment to relax and get back to Sardinia, the base of Tiscali, it is a very good place, to spend the summer there."

He joked that losing three masts in the last year was a record. Aside from this incident plus the mast he broke on leg two, Tiscali's first dismasting occurred during the Regate de Rubicon last year. In fact it is the fifth time that this boat has dismasted - Catherine Chabaud, the previous owner lose one rig and broke another when it was in her tenure.

Mauro Piani, Tiscali's shore manager, who has previously been involved with Italian America's Cup challenges, said that he was mystified by the failure of the mast track. "We checked completely the mast before the start, screw by screw so everything was perfect. All the screws we fixed with extra strong Loctite," he told us. He felt that the track may have become distorted by the force of the wind or of the batten cars on the track.

The future of the Bianchetti's Tiscali campaign remains undecided. He would like to take part in this autumn's two handed Transat Jacques Vabre and to sail in the Vendee Globe next year, but this is a decision for his sponsor.

Below: racing towards the finish line, the broken mast holding up the head of the main to leeward.
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