Sea, Sail & Surf news
Barcelona World Race
Meiklejohn and Verbraak secured 7th place overall
Friday 22 April 2011 –
All the versions of this article: [English] [français]
Verbraak said: “It is great to be back. It has been a while. I was meant to step off at the Cape Verde Islands but I had to make the phone call home and say I was going to be 90 days late. So now here we are, it has been a fantastic challenge and I have to thank Andy for letting me in and teaching me a few tricks in the Med before we got out into the Atlantic, it was an amazing trip. We could not have done it without the support of our team.”
Hugo Boss’ elapsed time for the 25,200 miles course is 111 days 10 hours 49 mins computed to have sailed at a theoretical average of 9,42 knots.
Hugo Bosssailed 29.246 actual miles at an average speed Speed #speedsailing of 10,93 knots.
For the Kiwi-Dutch duo who were only teamed up 24 hours 24 hours 24 hours best distance covered records before the start, Verbraak as substitute for Alex Thomson who needed immediate surgery on his appendix with two days to the race start, seventh is an excellent result. They had never sailed alone on the fleet’s most powerful IMOCA Imoca #IMOCA 60 before starting, and struggled out of the Mediterranean and by the Canary Islands were in 14th place more than 650 miles behind the leaders.
Verbraakexpected to get off Hugo Boss at the Cape Verde Islands to be replaced by Thomson, but the British skipper had to stay home to be with his new born infant son who was diagnosed with a heart problem. And so 100 days later than he should have been, the Dutch co-skipper was reunited with his family on the blustery dockside in Barcelona, while Meiklejohn was reunited with his five months pregnant wife.
The duo stuck to their strategy, learning the boat and gelling as duo but just when they we were getting into the race at the entry to the Southern Ocean a combination of a major repair which left them sailing without a mainsail for four days, effectively saw them lose touch completely with the leading boats, dropping more than 1000 miles to the leaders as a high pressure ridge compounded their losses.
And finally having fought their way up to seventh, the Hugo Boss pair had to stop in the Falkland Islands to make essential sail repairs which cost them eight days.
Press info www.barcelonaworldrace.org
Also in this section
Velux 5 Oceans : Brad Van Liew sailed home to Charleston victorious
Barcelona World Race : Dee Caffari and Anna Corbella take 6th
Barcelona World Race : Pachi Rivero y Toño Piris complete the podium
Barcelona World Race : Dick & Peyron win the second edition
