When they stepped onto the pontoon shortly after 0100 local time they looked frustrated and it really is not difficult to understand why.

This leg was their chance to right the wrongs of the last leg, a leg which they sailed for just one night until damages forced them to head for home, but ironically enough the thing that is meant to do the righting, the keel, was responsible for the wrongs as a spate of failures transformed their leg from a record breaking charge into an exercise in boat preservation.

It struck first on day 11. With the exception of a small fire and then getting dumped off the back of a high pressure system, life had been going well until that point. Paul Cayard’s crew were charging along in third place, collecting two and a half points along the way for rounding the scoring gate at 70 degrees east in bronze medal position and they were even holding pace with the twin torpedoes of ABN AMRO. They actually made gains when The Black Pearl accumulated 160 miles in six hours, a world record pace that would translate into a 560 mile day had it been sustained. “Man, we were having a great time smoking along,” Curtis Blewitt said. “Nothing was going to beat us going like that.” Then a few days later, just as they would have been thinking “this is going well,” came one loud bang. Cayard would have rolled his eyes and cursed to a level befitting any good pirate.

“I was not that happy to be honest,” he said, presumably leaving the expletives onboard.

His boat was taking on water through the keel support structure. If this was history repeating itself, then history is a harsh prankster, as it was a leak through the keel fairing doors that shorted the electronics and abruptly ended their trip to Cape Town. The upshot this time was a severe leak if the keel canted beyond 20 degrees. Sailing at just 80 percent of their potential, their 16 mile lead over movistar soon became a 200 mile deficit. But the immediate outlook was bleaker.

“As soon as we saw how much water was coming on I thought that was it,” Cayard said. “I was thinking we are heading for shore, this is over. Worse, there was just so much water I had all the guys move the emergency gear to the bottom of the stairwell. We didn’t know what was going to happen. We thought ‘hell the keel might even fall out the bottom of this boat!’ It was tough. We spoke to the Farr office (who designed the boat) and they talked us through what was happening. It wasn’t nearly as bad as we thought but it was scary alright.

“I saw pretty quickly that one of these boats compared to the VO60s is like comparing a Ferrari with a Camaro.”

The Pirates fought back however, almost totally alleviated their keel troubles and moved within striking distance of the front runners once again. Then Cayard’s eyes would have resumed their skyward stare to ask the almighty, “I know we are crewed by the damned but what have we done to deserve this?” The keel had gone again, but this time one of the hydraulic rams had failed just as Eclipse Island came into sight. Eclipse was due to signify a scoring gate and a collection of points, not to mention the beginning of the home straight. This was meant to be a happy time. If Lady Luck is indeed real then she is a cruel temptress.

“I was just wondering what the hell did we do?” Cayard said. “Is this like the curse of The Black Pearl or something! This should not be happening to us I was thinking. Even last night the wind totally died and we were just slatting for three hours! I was like why is it all going wrong for us!”

Blewitt added, “That was pretty frustrating. We would get going then something would come along and kick our butt! But we were lucky that if we were going to get damaged it didn’t happen hundreds of miles out at sea.”

They docked in Albany and locked the keel in the centre position and opted to carry on instead of allowing ING Real Estate Brunel to close the gap as repairs were carried out.

But these tough lessons will have produced some accelerating learning.

Cayard explained. “We learned a lot about our systems onboard, our watch system, the relationship between Jules (Salter) and I as skipper and navigator, we learned the sails, when to use what combinations. Importantly we learned we are competitive with the other boats, and what conditions. We know ABN will take us when they are reaching but we put miles on them when we are running. There’s a long way to go.”

Among the talk of possible curses onboard one thing became clear; there was a ghost writer in their ranks. For days no one could figure out who had abducted the keyboard and was filing daily missives from The Black Pearl. Cayard’s crisp prose was soon replaced by talk of “dropping the headsail jib thingy,” then Dirk de Ridder’s medical status was discussed in a way that, well, just wasn’t Cayard. “Crewman DeRidder attended the infirmary with a possible lump development on his abdomen, which, upon preliminary testing has been isolated down to two possible things; an AB MUSCLE; a remarkable feat to achieve for DeRidder, who has lived a polluted self-indulgent life of consumption. The other possibility is that this is a RIB showing through, which DeRidder has never seen before either!!”

Investigation proved the mystery scribe was in fact Justin Clougher, who has surely written himself into contention for the media prize. His accuracy was impeccable as became apparent when Dirk De Ridder, looking slimmer, stepped off the boat.

“I have lost a bit of weight, I can confirm that,” De Ridder said. “But whether there is in fact an abdominal muscle will not be known until I have been checked over by a doctor and the results of this examination can be known!”

Clougher’s writing may well have prised even more satisfaction from an unfortunate leg. He will also be in the frame for the nature award having chronicled the crew’s run ins with albatrosses, whales and an actual run in with a shark; early indications suggested the shark survived.

Throughout the problems, and through the varied news sources leaking from the boat, there seemed to be a strong team-spirit among the crew. It has been a frustrating time and none of the crew negated to mention their disappointment at the end of what had looked an extremely promising leg. But likewise, as Cayard summed up, the attitude of the crew is in the right place and aiming to the right places for the coming challenges.

“Team spirit and the chemistry onboard is the biggest asset. Then the speed and the boat comes next. You can overcome, which we did, a lot of things if you have a solid group. We have a solid group and have the team make-up to get back into this race.

“I am a great believer that things even themselves out. In a way it is good we have taken so much bad stuff happening to us this early on because we will get it back later on in the race. This is a long race and we are going to get better. It’s not over by a long way yet.”

Source: Event Media