Telefónica sit out Friday’s Pro-Am racing

Team Telefónica have withdrawn from Friday’s Pro-Am racing to ensure the new rigging their shore crew tuned on Thursday is checked and correct ahead of the Sanya Haitang Bay In-Port Race on Saturday.

Abu Dhabi Ocean Race were also considering withdrawing from the Pro-Am on Friday morning after the shore crew found three one metre long, two centimetre wide scratches on their keel bulb.

PAUL TODD/Volvo Ocean Race

Technical shore manager Mike Danks took an early morning dive to inspect the damage and concluded it was likely caused by a brief running aground on Thursday during practice racing.

Danks said the team considered the time-heavy task of hoisting the yacht out of the water to fix the scratches, but they were fortunately able to work underwater to sand out the problem areas.

“The boat’s been aground at some stage and we have some scratches on the bulb paint so we went down this morning to have a dive and try to sand most of them out to try and avoid lifting the boat out of the water if we can,’’ he said.

“The scratches happened some time yesterday, it’s quite unfortunate, but there’s nothing we can do about it.

“They’re not that deep, just surface scratches really, just more a frustration than a problem. It’s 99 per cent fixed at the moment, we just have to do another small dive tonight then it will be 100 per cent.”

More than 130 guests will have the experience of a lifetime on board a Volvo Open 70 at today’s Pro-Am, taking part in three races throughout the day.

Local CCTV4 reporter Hao Xin will be racing on board Team Sanya and was admittedly nervous before racing.

“I’m really afraid,’’ she said. “We were on board CAMPER filming yesterday and we had a few frightening moments, especially when the boat was changing directions. Today is windy so it’s raised my concern again.

“This is my first experience sailing. I can swim, but not that well, so it can be a bit confronting.”

Telefónica skipper Iker Martínez said his team would not disappoint and although they would not be racing they would still take their guests sailing.

Martínez said his team had to prioritise tuning the rigging they put in place yesterday following concerns over their former rigging.

“We have special guests and we know that they are really looking forward to it, but we are not going to rush anything,’’ he said. We’ve got to do what we’ve got to do properly and calmly.

“We’ll just go for a sail and our guests will find out what a day of adjusting the mast is like, which is also very interesting.”

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Leg 1. | Leg 2. | Leg 3.

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Source: http://volvooceanrace.com

The VENUES of the Volvo Ocean Race 2011-12:
The 2011-12 Volvo Ocean Race will start with the In-Port Race on 29 October in Alicante, Spain and the route will go to Cape Town, Abu Dhabi, Sanya, Auckland and on to Itajaí. Next stop is Miami and then across the Atlantic to Lisbon followed by Lorient and Galway.

1 Alicante 2 Cape Town 3 Abu Dhabi 4 Sanya 5 Auckland

6 Itajaí 7 Miami 8 Lisbon 9 Lorient 10 Galway

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Posted by nauticweb on February 17, 2012. Filed under News, Regatta-PORTS, Regattas, Regattas with Picture, Volvo Ocean Race. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can leave a response or trackback to this entry