More damage to the Vendee Fleet.
Yesterday morning Sebastian Simon in Arkea Pabrec, lying in forth position, reported that his starboard foil had struck something and damaged his foil and his hull. Without the starboard foil he will only be able to sail effectively on the starboard tack, a major disadvantage. Pictures sent back show water sloshing around within the hull.
Then yesterday evening Sam Davis sailing Initiatives Coeur reported she had also struck something. The extent of the damage is not known at the moment.
Both boats are heading north to get further away from the centre of the depression into calmer conditions to assess their damage and we should learn more to-day.
Charlie Dalin still has the lead by 230 miles. Linked Out has lost a lot of miles against Bureau Vallee, now a gap pf 60 miles, which has chosen a more southerly course. Pip Hare is in 23rd position more than 2000 miles behind the leader and Miranda Merron is lying 27th. The Trimaran Sodebo, sailed by Thomas Coville in his attempt on the Jules Verne Trophy is now beginning to overtake the tail enders. Alex Thomson continues to make good progress towards Cape Town with just one rudder.
Striking flotsam is becoming an increasingly frequent cause of damage to the modern generation of very fast sailing boats as the force of the impact is so much greater on account of their speed. When we sailed at 5 knots we usually just bumped into anything floating and usually brushed it aside, but the velocity of these modern boats makes such a strike far more dangerous and so the damage is greater.
On “Enza, New Zealand” in our first attempt at the Jules Verne Trophy in 1993, we hit something a third of the way between Cape Point and Cape Leewin in Australia, which made a hole in our hull. The buoyancy was not under threat as we had bulkheads about every two metres of the length of the boat, but we knew that if we continued, the force of the water would slowly tear our Nomex hull apart so we had to pull out and head for the nearest port which was East London in South Africa. We were never able to work out what we had hit, or, maybe, what had ht us.
There is a lot of rubbish out there in the oceans, some sinks, some floats. It is often impossible to see ahead so it is pure luck that you don’t hit anything. Discarded fishing lines, as those that removed Alex Thomson’s starboard rudder are only just one of the threats. The aquatic life is also a threat, or, equally, threatened by our faster speeds. Crossing the Atlantic towards New York 14 years ago in my Open 60 I was awakened in the middle of the night, well, thrown out of my bunk, when we hit something - twice, Once on the forward port side and then very soon afterwards on the aft starboard side. The person on the helm yelled down that he thought we had hit something. Picking myself up from the deck where I had been thrown, I could only think of saying “I think you might be right!” Fortunately a check around the boat indicated no obvious damage having been sustained but we diverted to Halifax in case. We think what we struck was probably a whale. It did damage us, but did not affect our watertight integrity, I just hope we did not damage the whale. That was an older generation of Open 60 and probably weighed a couple of tons more than the modern boats because she was built more strongly.
These sailors have to be sail trimmers, navigators, meteorologists, seaman, very competitive and self sufficient, and able to keep their boats maintained and repaired when necessary. This requires a very broad spread of skills, but without those skills you will be extremely lucky if you complete your voyage.