Bad Conditions Hit Whitbread; Boats Disabled

Two crippled boats--Britain’s Silk Cut and Sweden’s all-woman EF Education--limped toward land in the Whitbread Round The World Race today as the other seven dealt with gale-force winds and icebergs in conditions one skipper described as “very, very scary.”

EF Language, with San Francisco’s Paul Cayard as skipper, led the fleet across the Southern Ocean on the fifth and most dangerous leg of the race, about halfway from New Zealand to Cape Horn.

Silk Cut was in third place when skipper Lawrie Smith reported that the top half of his boat’s mast toppled Tuesday morning in 28-30 knots of wind. No one was injured, but Britain’s lone entry, with its purple shark graphics on the hull and sails, was left to sail a slow 2,000 miles to South America with a jury rig. There Smith planned to get enough diesel fuel to motor on to Sao Sebastiao, Brazil, to finish the leg.

EF Language crewman Josh Belsky messaged, “Our hearts truly go out to those guys. For it to happen now, in the middle of nowhere . . .”

A few days earlier, EF Education also dropped off the pace at half-speed when a rod support for its mast stripped its turnbuckle threads. Skipper Christine Guillou reduced sail rather than risk the mast falling.

Then there are the icebergs. The small ones are more dangerous because they float at surface level and don’t show up on radar. Knut Frostad, skipper of Norway’s fifth-place Innovation Kvaerner, noted by e-mail: “It’s blowing close to 40 [knots], it’s dark and . . . it’s scary--very, very scary.”

EF Language, averaging 19 knots, logged 447.6 nautical miles in 24 hours and had a 29-mile lead on Swedish Match.