The oldest boat in the race comes to the rescue of a fellow competitor in the Irish Sea
The Round Britain Race got back on the water today, after teams were forced to truck their boats from Plymouth to Milford Haven due to severe weather .
Wettpunkt.com, the Anglo-Austrian boat of Hannes Bohinc, Max Holzfeid and Ed Williams-Hawkes, took the third leg, arriving in Bangor more than an hour ahead of its class rivals.
More bad news for current RBR title holder Fabio Buzzi, however. The Italian was forced to retire suffering mechanical problems.
Gee, the boat MBM is tracking around the course, had a mixed day. The team set off at 11am from Milford Haven after being craned in and set a good pace early on, but stopped in the Irish Sea to help a fellow competitor.
Below you can read today’s exclusive blog from Gee’s driver, John Guille. You can also read the first day’s blog here , and an account of the second leg here .
“We kicked off around 11am – they told us yesterday the race briefing would be delayed until 8.45am and the start to 10.45am. There was still quite a swell heading towards us as we headed out, but it got a lot better as we turned up the Irish Sea. We soon came across Andy Macateer’s RIB – a big Buzzi Tecno 40 – so we stopped to see if they were ok. They had fuel problems, but they got going again. Then about 70 miles from the finish we had a call on the radio from Mystic Dragon, a Scorpion RIB carrying the RYA’s powerboat manager, John Puddifoot. They had a problem. Macateer got to him first, and then we came upon them after the radio call and said we’d take him in tow.
He had one engine down, so we chugged along at 25 knots with him behind us. The conditions were just getting better and better all the way up the Irish Sea – nice sunshine, just relaxing. A couple of the guys were having a snooze. The tow will not really effect our time. They’ll make an average of our speed before the tow, and work our what our pro rata finishing time would have been, and then add that to the total event time. So we won’t lose out. Was just nice to be able to help someone as they’ll be there to help you if you need it. Definitely earned ourselves a few drinks in the bar tonight. Weather is looking good for tomorrow, and we’ll very soon be in the shelter of the Scottish islands.
We found out yesterday that we had damaged the props after kissing the submarine barrier in Portsmouth Harbour. They were a bit dented, but luckily because the boat was on a trailer we were able to straighten them. The engineer also did a good job fixing our trim tabs.”
Position: Bangor, Northern Ireland
Leg: 201nm
Average speed: 35 knots before tow, 25 after.
Weather: Force 2s and 3s, further south residual waves from yesterday.
