In a brief live update from New Zealand’s very own Conrad Colman, he tells us about his stressful delayed start and how he is progressing during the start of this incredibly long endurance race.
“We did a bit of a scramble at the end, just before the start to hoist the big K3 instead of the Code Zero [sail] and …don’t know which crew… had too much slack in their end sheets, and went underneath my boat and got wrapped around the prop. Classic, classic mess. I was immobilised as it stole the engine, and she was stuck so I couldn’t use the sail. I didn’t want to start the race like that, so I kept my crew with me and we sorted the problem out. One of the guys dived under the boat and got it free, thankfully. But in that time it meant I did not respect the rules about getting the technical crew off the boat at the right time. So that means that I had to go into the ‘late protocol’ which was starting from a different line an hour later. So we moved to the different line, which is actually the same as the finish line, and then restarted. The wind then went from my side where I was closer to the coast, and I was able to more make up for the lost time and actually take a big chunk of time, so that was incredibly satisfying. Certainly, it shows that in the Globe and life you never ever, ever, ever give up and not be too discouraged. There are going to be good moments and bad moments and I already had one – a small electrical problem that gave a temporary blackout on the boat which caused another delay, and so I lost relative to similar boats. I have been overtaken by the boats, so yeah I’ve been down already, and we’ve been racing for hours. And exciting, it starts the process of shaking the rust off that accumulated during the three weeks at the race village and I am excited to get stuck into it.”
