Final miles for Renault Captur to Barcelona World Race finish

(April 15, 2015; Day 105) – Renault Captur have moved within the less than 100 miles to the Barcelona World Race finish zone but in the early afternoon have slowed to 4kts. The breeze is expected to fill in for them in a couple of hours from the ENE and they should them have a decent passage in to the finish line. ETA on the finish line is still between 2200hrs and 0200hrs local time this evening.

Spirit of Hungary are 300 miles from Gibraltar now and making steady speeds. Conrad Colman was in good spirits this morning:

“Life is good. It has been a long slog in the Atlantic but we have broken it down into little chunks and we have ben going fast past Madeira, yesterday was the last of our Atlantic milestones and the next bit of rock we will see is Gibraltar and that is really exciting. Conditions are great, we have 20kts from the NW, we are two sail reaching, flat seas which is great for us and our keel, we have good speeds. Absolutely perfect conditions at the moment.”

Keel?
“There is an axle which the keel pivots on, it is supported by two brackets and these are held into the hollow of the boat. Currently we only have two bolts on the front bracket on the port side, the ones on the starboard side have sheared off. And so we are currently running on three quarters of the bolts and really hoping that they hang on until we get into Barcelona. One thing that is helping us at the moment is by keeping the keel canted the hydrualic ram is actually pushing the top of the keel into the boat as well and so as long as the ram is either pushing or pulling it is helping support the keel. We are no concerned about catastrophic failure, we are not going to end up upside down but it is certainly a very stressful situation at the moment.”

Life with Nandor?
“Things are good, we are weathering the stress of the situations well together. We are a team with good solidarity, the stress is resting on both of our shoulders and we get along just fine. We are both very much looking forwards to a change of scenery, to seeing other people.”

Triathlon soon?
“I have been doing squats and push ups but no biking or swimming! My fiance has been doing triathlon training all the while I have been sailing. She has just invited me to do the first triathlon early May, I think that is just so she can run circles around me. But i am looking forwards to getting back on land and getting to work on other activities. It has been wonderful to be at sea, but it will be nice to get a break too!”

Ranking at 18:00 UTC:
1. Cheminées Poujoulat (Bernard Stamm – Jean Le Cam) finished Mar 25 (84:05:50:25)
2. Neutrogena (Guillermo Altadill – Jose Muñoz) finished Mar 31 (89:11:47:00)
3. GAES Centros Auditivos (Anna Corbella – Gerard Marin) finished Apr 1 (91:05:09:28)
4. One Planet One Ocean / Pharmaton (Aleix Gelabert – Didac Costa) finished Apr 8 (98:09:12:09)
5. We Are Water (Bruno Garcia – Willy Garcia) finished Apr 9 (99:03:06:28)
6. Renault Captur (Jörg Riechers – Sebastien Audigane) 61.8 nm Distance To Finish
7. Spirit of Hungary (Nandor Fa – Conrad Colman) 787.8 nm DTF
Hugo Boss (Alex Thomson – Pepe Ribes) Abandon

Tracker – Event details

Report by event media.

Background: The third edition of the Barcelona World Race is the only double-handed, non-stop, round the world race. Eight IMOCA 60 teams started December 31, 2014, with the intent to cover 23,450 nautical miles in a circumnavigation from Barcelona to Barcelona, putting the capes of Good Hope (South Africa), Leeuwin (Australia) and Horn (Chile) to port and the Antarctic to starboard.