Puma face challenge to revive Volvo yacht race campaign

The Puma team who led for much of the Volvo Ocean Race first leg only to break their mast face a huge challenge in sporting, human and technical terms to keep their campaign alive. The American team, who finished second in the last edition under the same skipper Ken Read and had looked in great shape, broke their mast in three places on Monday. That forced them to retire from leg one, while putting a question mark over their ability even to be ready in time for the second of the nine offshore legs. Read sent a video from the stricken boat promising their campaign was far from over but without a proper rig in the middle of the south Atlantic, and with fuel and food supplies running low, they are facing a host of problems. "The bottom line is our leg?s over," Read said on Tuesday. "We?re assessing all our options. To say we?re disappointed would be the understatement of the century. The boat was going great, the team was exactly what I always knew: awesome. "This is a huge setback to the programme but is it the end of the programme? Not even a little bit. We?ll live to fight another day, I promise you that." They are currently pointing at the sparsely populated island of Tristan da Cunha, around 700 nautical miles away, but they are 2,000 nautical miles away from Cape Town itself and travelling at only around seven knots. The options open to them include finding a boat to deliver them a fresh supply of fuel, organising a boat to tow them in and lifting the boat on to a ship with a crane. Whatever they decide on, it will take an incredible effort to get them to the start line in time for the second in-port race in Cape Town on December 10 and the start of leg two to Abu Dhabi the following day. Even if they can sort out the logistics of getting their boat and the replacement mast to Cape Town, the sailors will then face the prospect of beginning racing again without any real rest and physically shaken up from being at sea since November 5. The good news for Read is that with only a six-boat fleet starting the race, and only three of them set to finish leg one, their points deficit will hardly be insurmountable. Telefonica have a clear lead heading into Cape Town and are likely to pick up 30 points for the leg victory. If the other positions stay as they are, Camper will get 25 and Groupama 20.