Photos: L © Jon Nash R © Oskar Khilborg

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Wed, 31 May 2006 18:42:52 UTC

For five hours yesterday Campbell Field, movistar’s shore manager, sat in a jet combing the Atlantic Ocean for any sign of the yacht his team abandoned ten days ago, but like their last effort a week ago, the search was unsuccessful.

A third search is now dependant on the willingness of the team’s insurers to fund another sortie over the 900 square miles of ocean where the boat is expected to be, but with the boat’s status unknown hope is fading that they will ever find movistar or learn the reasons behind her demise.

Field, however, insisted a continued search for their stricken Volvo Open 70 is worthwhile. “The insurers would like to have the opportunity of examining the damaged areas, it is our duty to make every effort to find it, because it could be a hazard to navigation and, finally, it is a very valuable object,” he said.

Russell Bowler, president of the Farr Yacht Design company which designed the boat, suggested any discovery would vastly enhance their understanding of the keel failures that led to skipper Bouwe Bekking’s decision to leave the vessel. In the meantime he has been studying, with some success, pictures and interviews with the crew to learn what led to the keel breaking and leaking hundreds of gallons of water into the hull.

“We can’t really be certain why the problems happened,” Bowler said. “Getting the boat back may be a big help. Even if we got it back now, though, there would be problems.

“If we had the boat immediately after the failure we would have known a lot more. With it rocking around out there the damage from the keel wobbling backwards and forth where the bearing goes through the hull has probably made a mess and it would be difficult to pinpoint what’s wrong.

“We have some photos taken in the 15 or 16 hours between the failure and when the boat was abandoned which will give us a little bit of an idea of what the damage was. We have gone over and over the events of the repairs and maintenance that was carried out around the world, and have interviewed the crew to understand how long it was loaded in the state it was loaded before it failed. We are trying to get a clear picture of as many facts as we can.

“From the photographs we have learned the problem was very local to the bearings. It didn’t involve a great deal of structure, just a piece of lamination alongside the bearing. The bearing moved sideways a small distance. It didn’t occur with any slam or crash, it was some kind of decay of strength over a period of time.

“It’s a thick piece of laminate about 60 millimetres thick. In Rio we knocked on one side and knocked on the other and declared it to be sound. That process only tells you if there was a problem near the surface.

Bowler went on to explain how Farr Yacht Design is now pouring over slamming load data collected from the Pirates. He admitted some of the findings were startling.

“There’s a number of ways we can advance our knowledge of the facts. We put a gauge on Pirates - an accelerometer - that will give us details of the loadings on the central area of the boat. That may clarify one area of the mystery. We got the data off, had a quick look, and some of it is quite scary. It is such a big pile of data, it needs a lot of analytical work; we are working on it at the moment.”

He also clarified his opinion that SP Engineering, who briefly viewed the completed design and supplied materials for the build, did a “first class” job.

“Just to clarify my comments the other day, SP (Engineering) briefly reviewed parts of the design after it was completed, though they were not involved in the design of the keel and its structures – that was our responsibility. As far as I know the materials and service (resins and the enforcements and bonding material) from SP were first class.”

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