Has Dongfeng revealed their speed secret?

(January 14, 2015; Day 12) – Dongfeng Race Team has consistently been one of the fast boats thus far in the 2014-15 Volvo Ocean Race, and they are the only boat that continues to deal with problems with the aft padeye that is used for big masthead CodeZero gennaker (MH0).

With just two days remaining on the first leg to Cape Town, the padeye broke, which led to the padeye replacement amongst the fleet to a much bigger and stronger version. But now Dongfeng reports on the third leg to Sanya that the structure around their padeye is failing.

Coincidence, or is the Chinese team pressing their big sail harder than anyone else? Speed secret alert!

The MH0 is used a lot in two different modes – upwind (sailing against the wind) in everything from 2 to 8 or so knots, and downwind in winds of up to 25+ knots of true speed.

“This time it was not the pad eye that had the problem, but the composites underneath the deck,” explained crewman Kevin Escoffier. “The nut holding the pad-eye was getting sucked up into the deck.”

So what does Dongfeng do now?

With a safety strop looped through the pad eye to a strong point on the transom to keep the loads off the trouble spot, and a resin repair below deck, they hope it’ll soon be able to take the loads again.

And what does the fleet do? Maybe keep an eye on that aft padeye, and start pressing their MHO a bit harder.

Background: The fleet is now on Leg 3 from Abu Dhabi, UAE to Sanya, China (4,642 nm), which started Jan. 3 with an ETA on or after Jan. 25. The 2014-15 Volvo Ocean Race began in Alicante, Spain on Oct. 11 with the final finish on June 27 in Gothenburg, Sweden. Racing the new one design Volvo Ocean 65, seven teams will be scoring points in 9 offshore legs to determine the overall Volvo Ocean Race winner. Additionally, the teams will compete in 10 In-Port races at each stopover for a separate competition – the Volvo Ocean Race In-Port Series.