When reflecting on the second leg, I can tell you that it was quite different compared to the first one... Rio de Janeiro said goodbye to us with amazing weather - sun, blue sky's and, most important for us, a good breeze. Our start was set to be just in front of Copacabana, which allowed us to enjoy a last glimpse back to the beautiful city with its beaches and mountains. The weather forecast predicted strong winds for the next days, but for the start only slighter wind. As we crossed the start line, the wind suddenly increased, leaving us unfortunately a bit unprepared. Our Yankee 1 was tied down on the foredeck ready to hoist, but our skipper Max decided to leave it there for the start. Just minutes after the start the wind increased and water started to splash onto the deck. As we were just getting our foulies on, a bigger wave came across the foredeck and dragged the Yankee 1 down to the lower side.
We tried to recover it with several people from this position, while waves were soaking us and increasing the weight of the sail. After 30 minutes of effort to bring the sail back up on the high side, four of our stanchion posts (which hold the guard rail around the boat) on our starboard side decided to quite their jobs and were bent towards the low side, now allowing the Yankee 1 to slip in the water. We immediately changed our course and eventually managed to get hold of the whole sail. However, the damage seemed to be worse then we thought. Two stanchion posts were nearly bent at a angle of 60 degrees and two had completely been broken off. Two crew members started with repair works, which were made even harder, as waves continued to come across the deck and the sun began to set. To make things worse, we suddenly heard a loud bang and something fell onto the deck (luckily not hitting anyone of us). After a quick inspection of the rig, we found out that our port running back stayed had lost its connections 2/3 up the mast. This meant that the mast was not held backwards anymore and, therefore, forced us to tack once again. As a result of the two damages we decided to head back to port and fix both things, as we only had sailed for 3 hours towards Cape Town and at least had 14 days ahead of us.
This was quite a dramatic start to out second leg and not to mention that nearly half of the crew was sea sick at that time too. After arriving back in Rio, repairs immediately started, as we still wanted to keep up with the rest of the fleet. It felt a bit like a Formula 1 pit stop with repair experts from Clipper already waiting for us and only spending a couple of hours in port. In the end, we started racing again 12 hours after the decision was made to turn around. From that point onwards, all of us were highly motivated to catch up with the boats in front of us.
In the end, we are very happy to have arrived in 8th position, as we caught up with two teams and two other had to start later from Rio because of bigger damages. In terms of the weather this leg also every different. From the beginning onwards we were wearing our foulies for most of the days. As we were chased by low pressure systems coming from the west and two of them overtaking us, we experienced some pretty rough weather. Both times the wind picked up to 30-40 knots with gusts of 50 knots, plenty of rain and big waves.
At around midday on October 22nd it was achieved: we could see the first mountains through the mist at the horizon. A couple of hours later we had
the well-known ‘Table Mountain’ right in front of us, while the sun started to set. It was a magnificent sight! To our joy we were greeted by the crew of other boats that just had arrived a
couple of hours before us and a box of ice-cold beers. I can tell you this beer had a special taste :)
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