Frustration and nail torture

It has been some frustration onboard today. We have lost a lot of miles from our decision to go outside the ‘dangerous ground area’ and we are struggling to get back.

At one stage today, we even felt we were really slow and we were ripping our hair out, trimming and trimming to try to figure out what we could do better. It was like a flashback from the start when Puma, Telefónica and Ericsson 4 easily slipped away from us just by better boatspeed.

“When you are sailing the boat like you usually do and the performance numbers are good, but still you feel slow, you get really frustrated, Magnus Olsson says and continues: “You start to try new things, which can be both bad and good.”

We felt a bit better when we spotted Ericsson 4 and could compare our speed with them, now we at least now that we are as fast as they are.

Since the start of this race, we have had quite a lot of injuries onboard. The latest one happened yesterday. Magnus Olsson managed to get his thumb stuck in the runner when he was trying to adjust the lines, at the same time as it was released. He did not scream but, with a very thin voice, he asked someone to grind the runner back on again so he could get his finger out.

He was quite lucky to get away with some loss of blood, a broken nail and some swelling. He could just as well have lost the top of the finger.

‘Doctor Mason’ (Richard Mason/NZL) did some analyzing of the injury straight away and, after some consultation with our team doctor over the phone and after sending him some pictures of it, they decided that the nail had to be removed.

Magnus was trying to get away but ‘Dr Mason’ forced him down in a bunk to pull it out. Martin Krite was nursing and supported by injecting painkiller into Magnus’ thumb, a quite tricky manoeuvre in the wavy conditions. But everything went smoothly and after Mason sacrificed the nail to King Neptune, we are now hoping for some luck to bring us up to the top squad again. 

Gustav Morin - MCM