Welcome home, Charlie

Volvo Ocean Race: Skipper Enright and Vestas 11th Hour Racing shine in Leg 8 despite adversity of difficult race

Photos and story by Richard W. Dionne Jr. rdionne@eastbaynewspapers.com
Posted 5/9/18

Bristol resident and Vestas 11th Hour Racing skipper Charlie Enright came from behind to capture third place in Leg 8 of the Volvo Ocean Race on Tuesday morning. The fleet sailed through a pea soup …

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Welcome home, Charlie

Volvo Ocean Race: Skipper Enright and Vestas 11th Hour Racing shine in Leg 8 despite adversity of difficult race

Posted

Bristol resident and Vestas 11th Hour Racing skipper Charlie Enright came from behind to capture third place in Leg 8 of the Volvo Ocean Race on Tuesday morning. The fleet sailed through a pea soup fog with little wind as the sun rose in NewportHarbor. MAPFRE and Team Brunel placed first and second minutes before Vestas crossed the finish line.

Family, friends and sailing fans greeted Enright and crewmen, Newport resident Nick Dana and Brown sailor Mark Towill, as the sleek ship backed into the dock at Fort Adams. Mr. Enright’s wife, Meris, handed up their 2-year-old son, Thomas, to the skipper as the celebration began aboard the ship once docked.

“This leg has had its ups and downs,” said Mr. Enright. “We didn’t start great, but we feel like we sailed pretty well for the middle two-thirds of the leg. Then with some positive input and some local knowledge, we ended up back on the podium, which is great.”

The Vestas 11th Hour Racing crew began the the 45,000-nautical-mile around the world race with a win in Leg 1 and held second place after Leg 3 as the fleet sailed into Melbourne, Australia.

Then adversity hit.

Mr. Enright’s son came down with a serious illness over Christmas during the start of Leg 4, leading Mr. Enright to fly to Rhode Island. While he was away, his boat collided with a fishing boat off the coast of Hong Kong near the finish line. The Vestas crew was uninjured, but one fisherman was killed and nine others rescued from the crash. Team Vestas went from a probable second-place finish to a last-place finish.

They missed the next leg due to the crash, and in Leg 7, their boat was dismantled, a day after they rounded Cape Horn in second place. The vessel suffered a broken mast that had to be cut away to avoid further damage to the hull.

During an interview at the dock on Tuesday, Mr. Enright was asked: “The emotion comes from the ups and downs, high and lows that you’ve had during this entire race. It’s a race of adventure and amazing sailing. How is your team handling the adversity?”

“We pride ourselves on trying to get not too high or not too low. We are a pretty unemotional team when it comes to things like that. We try to always take care of things that are under our control. Having said that, we’ve faced some serious adversity. So it’s made it pretty hard,” Mr. Enright said. “We capitalized on some good things here at the end and we are happy to be on the podium again.”

The skipper commented further about Leg 8 and coming home.

“It was an interesting leg for us certainly,” Mr. Enright said. “We didn’t start out very well. But then as we had choices throughout the course of the leg, we made some pretty good ones and got ourselves back on the podium. This leg had a lot of everything. Twenty-four hours ago we were hard running at 40-plus knots. When we sail, we sail pretty well. It’s nice to score some points in 2018 certainly, and get on the podium in our hometown. There’s a lot of emotion. But it’s all good at this camp.”

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