Financial Crisis 3rd at Capetown – A night of drama, and tension – Sat 5th November

A night of drama and a hard fought podium result into Cape Town

This is just a brief message to say that we’ve crossed the finish line to
take third in the first leg of the Global Ocean Race managing to keep
Cessna behind to the finish. Paul and I are absolutely exhausted but
incredibly delighted. We have given absolutely all we had to give to
achieve this result…

It was not as straight forward as it first may seem, however close the
battle was on the tracker drama unfolded thickening the plot in the
darkest hours of the night.

Just after the 9pm position report we had gained just enough miles to
start believing it was going to be possible, we had 22 miles lead with 150
to go and at that stage we were better positioned relative to the finish
line and polling higher speeds.

Then a sequence of events that can only have been conceived by a Hollywood story writer
we had some of the most difficult moments of the race… surfing at 15-17 knots
the tack line of the big spinnaker broke, the kite was left flying and wrapping and it took
us a good half an hour before we had it down… we tried to fly it again,
from the bow rather than from the bowsprit but the sock was twisted and we
couldn’t get it to open… so we changed for the A6, the smaller spinnaker,
in the hope that thanks to the surfing waves we could have managed just enough
speed and still win with our 22 miles lead…

Flying the spinnaker from the bow was difficult as it kept collapsing and filling
with loud bangs, after one of these the runner broke at the same time as
the spinnaker exploding… we don’t know exactly what happened, the
spinnaker must have wrapped around the pulpit before filling as the pulpit
has literally been torn out… lots of damage hence, a torn spinnaker, a
broken runner and the pulpit… at this stage we thought there was little
we could do, but we decided we’d check the position report, take stock and
see what if any of the other sails we could fly.

Here fate intervened, oneof the emails that came through when we checked
positions was from Cessna, they had also suffered damaged and were limping
into Cape Town without spinnakers… the two incidents happened pretty much
simultaneously leaving us with a somewhat bizarre race to the finish with just our
mainsails and genoas… we had 28 miles lead by this stage, we kept going
and even just under mainsail and genoa kept averaging around 10 knots
thanks to the enormous swell that was getting us surfing regularly…

We arrived to the finish line about 3 hours ahead of Cessna. Their white
knuckle strategy backfired, and simultaneously left us with expensive
damage that will run into the thousands of pounds to take care of but it
was a spectacular and hard fought race to the very finish and we are
looking forward to celebrate in Cape Town.

More stories and photos of the finish to follow.
If you’d like to celebrate with us and buy us a beer you can do so online
at www.marconannini.com/help

Posted by: First Class Sailing