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Fog and flub mar start of yacht race

E-mail|Link|Comments () May 16, 2009 07:24 PM

(David L. Ryan/Globe Staff)

The boats heading out of the harbor in the fog.

By Padraig Shea, Globe Correspondent

The beginning of the transatlantic leg of the round-the-world Volvo Ocean Race was marred in Boston Harbor by a false start, heavy fog, and an oil tanker sailing into the paths of the racing yachts.

Before heading out on their 2,250-nautical mile voyage to Galway, Ireland, the racers were to begin with a lap of Boston's Inner Harbor. But the race was delayed 20 minutes by a premature shot from the starting gun. The false start, coupled with the fog, put some of the racing boats on a near-collision course with the 700-foot tanker, which was being towed by two tugboats, said Petty Officer Luke Pinneo, a Coast Guard spokesman.

As the boats approached the turn at the eastern end of the harbor, they saw the tanker Nor’easter, which sails under the Marshall Islands’ flag, suddenly emerge from the fog. There were no collisions, but one team was delayed by the tanker's approach.

"The fog rolled in right around noon and it came in thick and it came in quick,” Pinneo said. "There was maybe 20 yards visibility in the fog. So what it sounds like is [the yachts] came out of the fog right at that turnaround spot."

The fog affected seven other vessels in Boston Harbor today, Pinneo said. Four lost their bearings and had to be retrieved, two ran aground, and another ran out of gas 25 miles from shore.

The Boston-to-Galway leg is the seventh of the 37,000-nautical-mile race, which began in Alicante, Spain in October 2008 and is scheduled to finish in St. Petersburg, Russia in late June 2009. The course leads teams through ports in Cape Town, Singapore, Rio de Janeiro, Boston, Galway, Stockholm, and around Cape Horn.