{"id":123,"date":"2011-12-19T15:58:23","date_gmt":"2011-12-19T15:58:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.firstclasssailing.com\/blog\/?p=123"},"modified":"2011-12-19T15:59:17","modified_gmt":"2011-12-19T15:59:17","slug":"123","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.firstclasssailing.com\/blog\/123\/","title":{"rendered":"War of attrition: Southern Ocean damage"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u00a0\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

I may sound boring if i reiterate that we’re still in 35-40 knots of wind,
\nwe have not seen anything less than 25 and anything up to 55 for the past
\nweek and inevitably we’ve suffered some level of damage.<\/p>\n

Australia is now only 750 miles above our heads but the finish line still
\nsome 3100 miles to the east, it’s a long bloody way to New Zealand!<\/p>\n

The first major item to pack up was the Watt&Sea hydrogenerator, the
\nbracket that holds it on the back of the boat buckled as a side wave must
\nhave pushed the leg with great force, the leg itself is bent and for now
\nit is unserviceable.<\/p>\n

Secondly, and more frustratingly, one of the two NKE wind wands has packed
\nup as a front swept over our heads, it read 55 knots minutes before
\nceising to work. Both my wind wands packed up in leg one, one in a squall
\nby the doldrums, the second further south and we had to finish the
\nremaining 2500 miles with just compass mode for our autopilot and no
\nwind data at all… in Cape Town we reinstalled new wands at considerable
\nexpense so to see one failing like that after less than 3 weeks of use is
\nreally disappointing. Campagne de France had also been left with no wind
\ninstruments, and no autopilot, for the last 1000 miles or so of leg one,
\nit’s a common problem and the designers should sit down and design these
\nunits better and make them capable of withstanding 55 knots, we did, the
\nboat did, the sails did, why not the wind instruments?<\/p>\n

The rest of the snags are to non critical areas of the boat, one of the
\nsatellite phones does not recognize its own antenna and the other works
\nfine for data but we can no longer speak as water ingress in the plug
\nmeans it wont work, it’s an easy fix though, all it nees is a new crimped
\nplug but it’ll have to wait till Wellington.<\/p>\n

Of course a famous ad would say being here is priceless watching the tips
\nof the albatrosses wings gently caress the crests of the waves, enormous
\nwaves rolling one after the other, the boat surfing down valleys of
\nwater… I have however to admit to struggling with the continuous
\nbloodshed of bills which add up so quickly, Cape Town cost around 5k in
\nrepairs most of which were very kindly donated by you, the reading public,
\nthrough online donations at www.marconannini.com\/help<\/a> i really cannot
\nthank enough all those that contributed.<\/p>\n

We are lucky though with the many companies that have supported us and
\nmade our life that little bit easier, today we want to thank RTW Food for
\ntheir supply of excellent quality freeze dried foods, they have made a
\nreal difference in the bad weather. A big thanks goes to Ventana Group who
\nis flying my girlfriend at each stopover, for morale i’m sorry but that
\nbeats freeze dried 10:1!!! More thanks to the Mustang Club of Italy who
\ncontinues to support us and after a successful gathering of beautiful
\nMustang Cars in Cape Town is arranging a gathering in Wellington. Thank
\nyou also to the USZZ, the office for Slovak nationals living abroad. In
\nCape Town we met with the Slovak Ambassador and the local Slovak community
\nwhere i showed up looking very elegant in my Chatham Marine sponsored
\nclothes which have served us so well ashore. The list continues, but i’ll
\nleave more names to thank for the next blog.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u00a0 I may sound boring if i reiterate that we’re still in 35-40 knots of wind, we have not seen anything less than 25 and anything up to 55 for the past week and inevitably we’ve suffered some level of damage. Australia is now only 750 miles above our heads but the finish line still […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-123","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-global-ocean-race"],"views":2573,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.firstclasssailing.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/123","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.firstclasssailing.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.firstclasssailing.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.firstclasssailing.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.firstclasssailing.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=123"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.firstclasssailing.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/123\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":128,"href":"https:\/\/www.firstclasssailing.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/123\/revisions\/128"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.firstclasssailing.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=123"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.firstclasssailing.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=123"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.firstclasssailing.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=123"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}