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Sent: 2 March 2006

To: Duty Officers

"WE ARE SINKING!!!!!!!!!! EVERYBODY UP". I can tell you not a nice way to get woken up. "SLOW THE BOAT DOWN, THE WATER IS COMING IN VERY FAST, AND CLOSE THE WATERIGHT HATCHES".

A sailor’s nightmare is sinking, and this looked like a pretty serious situation. If we had rats onboard they would have jumped off by now.

Mobilised some people on deck to drop all the sails, and when I went downstairs again, I got a real shock. The generator box was already completely underwater, and the water had spread now through the entire mid compartment, and was close to washing over the main engine box as well. And what a mess inside, sails, sleeping bags, food bags, you can't name it, were floating around. In the mean time Spike (Peter Doriean) had collected all the safety gear and put this on deck, just to be sure.

Capey (Andrew Cape) had already informed race-headquarters. After seeing the amount of water, I decided to ask headquarters if other boats could assist. Water and electricity don't like each other so much, so the circuit breakers were popping off all the time.

With the personal torches on it looked like a scene that Hitchcock could only dream of. Now Chris (Nicholson) was diving underwater to connect the two emergency high capacity bilge pumps directly to the batteries, as that was the only way of assuring power and running of the pumps. What else do you do? Bail of course like mad, but I felt it was like watching television where somebody is using one small water hose to protect his house against a raging bushfire. Even though we knew we were on the losing hand, strangely enough you don't give up.

Then the shout, PUMPS ARE RUNNING. Now we maybe have a chance to beat the incoming flow rate, and get the level down.

To all our big relief, this was the case. Slowly but surely, the levels went down,

and we got the situation under control. We have made an emergency fix on the leaking box, and the incoming flow is minimal. I’m proud of the boys they did well, not just in this emergency situation, but how magnificently they have sailed movistar up to that moment as well.

Now heading for Ushuaia (Argentina) to look at damage.

Bouwe Bekking - skipper

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