SIGHTINGS
DIEGO FRUCTUOSO / TEAM TELEFONICA
volvo ocean race Norwegians are known for their stoicism, and it appears that firsttime Volvo Ocean Race CEO Knut Frostad has it in spades. Given that this year’s race produced only a six-boat field, Frostad — himself a veteran of four Whitbread/Volvo Ocean races — didn’t have much wiggle room for the attrition typical of this epic round-the-world race. What’s somewhat surprising is that he used most, if not all, of it in the first 115 miles of the race. The fact that Frostad apparently didn’t suffer a total mental breakdown is a minor miracle in itself. Ultimately, it wasn’t just one boat that was forced to scrap its plans for Leg One, but three! The first to fall — literally — was Ian Walker’s Abu Dhabi Azzam — which dropped its new Future Fibers rig while pounding upwind in 35 knots of breeze and 12-ft seas, just 85 miles into the race. The second boat to come limping back to port was ‘05-’06 winner Mike Sanderson’s Team Sanya, which managed to find itself with a significant hole in the bow just 115 miles into the 6,500-mile leg while experiencing breeze to 43 knots and 30-ft seas. Sanderson was sailing the only boat to have competed in the last race, and one of the few As of this writing, the crew of ‘Telefóni- to survive that edition’s hate mission ca’ were holding on to their lead. through the Luzon Strait intact. It would be tempting to think a four-boat race might make for boring spectating, but that turned out to be anything but the case when Franck Cammas and his largely French team on Groupama took a big flier, splitting with the rest of the three remaining boats as they stared down a big ridge stretching nearly all the way across the Atlantic. Eventually there were almost 600 miles of lateral separation between Groupama and the other pack, which consisted of Ken Read’s Puma, Iker Martínez’ Telefónica, and Chris Nicholson’s Camper. As of this writing, the leaders are within 3,000 miles of the finish in Cape Town. The house has called Cammas’ bet, and the South Atlantic was poised to throw as much of a curveball to the fleet as did its counterpart in the north. But Puma got hit by that pitch — they dropped their Hall Spars rig with Southern Spars carbon rigging some 700 miles from the remote island of Tristan da Cunha. Are you curious about how all of that played out? Are you curious about whether Sanderson and Walker are down for the count? Are you curious about who has proven to be the cream of the crop so far in this year’s fleet? We have the answers, but you’ll have to turn to this month’s Racing Sheet, which begins on page 112, to get them. — rob
tragedy in the narc rally We’re sad to report that Baja Ha-Ha vet Jan Anderson, 59, of the formerly Sausalito-based Island Packet 380 Triple Stars was washed overboard on the afternoon of November 11 approximately 185 miles northwest of Bermuda while participating in the North American Rally to the Caribbean (NARC). Her husband Rob, also 59, activated the boat’s EPIRB and called a mayday to report that Jan had been swept away by a 30-ft wave. The Coast Guard dispatched an HC-130 Hercules SAR plane to the area, and the 600-ft tanker High Jupiter diverted to aid in the search, as well as to take Rob off Triple Stars. Tragically, the search was suspended on Saturday afternoon with no sign of Jan. Rob concontinued on outside column of next sightings page
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Latitude 38
• December, 2011
sailing the bay When Saving the Bay, a four -part documentary on the history of San Francisco Bay, premiered on KQED in 2009, it garnered the highest ratings of any PBS station the night of its broadcast. The program, narrated by Robert Redford, went on to be aired nationally on PBS as a prime-time special this spring, and earned four regional Emmy awards, including for Best Documentary. Now Executive Producer Ron Blatman is working on a new project that is sure to excite Bay
‘Team Sanya’ unintentional water ballast system.
