As the third boat finishes the Barcelona World Race, the fourth in sight, we look at the B&G equipment aboard the yachts and one particular crews experience with it.
On the 11th February Jean-Pierre Dick and Damian Foxall steered Paprec-Virbac 2 across the finishing line to take line honours and victory in the inaugural Barcelona World Race. Their 25,000-mile journey, non-stop around the planet, came to a close at 20:49.49 GMT off Barcelona's Olympic Port, having been at sea for 92 days 8 hours 49 minutes and 49 seconds. The Franco-Irish duo has shown an impressive display of speed, seamanship and extreme endurance under the most testing of conditions.
Paprec-Virbac 2 is fitted with B&G WTP2 processor and B&G Pilot system. Damian Foxall, an Irishman with five circumnavigations under his belt, spoke at length to The Daily Sail about their experiences during the voyage. Pilots were a particular focus and he had some interesting insight into the importance of a good pilot system. Foxall says they used their B&G pilots a huge amount…
"An autopilot is worth at least two or three crew. If you go off single-handed with an autopilot in some ways you have already got three people on the boat, at least, because the autopilot drives. It is critical to have a really good autopilot that works in as many conditions as possible and a lot of the time it drives faster than we do, especially when you are tired.”
"Managing that became an issue when we thought we were going to run out of diesel, and there are situation when you have to drive - you are faster driving downwind with the kite. And there are other times when the autopilot does a fantastic job. Any time you want to do a manoeuvre and it requires two people, on she goes and it is pretty nice to know when you are on the foredeck pulling down the small spinnaker in 35 knots that your autopilot is keeping the boat pointed downwind. The spinnaker is socked and at some stage you have got the spi socked and you have two guys on the foredeck and it would only take the autopilot to luff up and the whole thing could go pear-shaped quite quickly. We never had one of those situations."
At 05.34 GMT on the 14th February Alex Thomson and Andrew Cape brought Hugo Boss across the finish line to take second place in the Barcelona World Race. Their boat which is equipped with a B&G H3000 and Pilot system performed well and despite a short stop in New Zealand came in just over two days behind Paprec-Virbac 2.
Swiss skipper Dominique Wavre and French yachtswoman Michele Paret crossed the finish line in their IMOCA Open 60 Temenos II at 18.09 GMT on the 17th February. Temenos II is a new generation Owen-Clarke design launched in 2006 shortly before the Route du Rhum. With a B&G WTP2 processor at the heart of the electronics system, Temenos II also ran a B&G Pilot system.
We will be following up on this report with further information about the Barcelona race along with an insight into the type of challenges the people and boats that participate in such a race have to face and overcome.
For constant updates on the remaining boats racing and further reports on the race visit www.barcelonaworldrace.com
