Glad the crew are ok, but what a random place to run aground. Any one got a RIB and a big rank of fuel, I fancy me some salvage…
http://www.volvooceanrace.com/en/news/8084_Grounded.html

I’m sort of surprised that the nav system didn’t warn them in some way. I imagine it’s not a bargain basement one, they said the shoals were visible if you zoomed right in. I’d imagine a land proximity alarm wouldn’t be beyond the wit of the developers.

I agree – and if you look at the track of the other boats, they all steered a tad more to the north west just at that point, before returning to original track, so I think they all knew the risk.
Possibly an attempt to cut a corner and sneak a mile back?

Boom!

I think a few of them took some fairly last minute action to avoid the reef, maybe they had the chart plotter zoomed in a bit further.

I’ve asked a mate in the who works on the software for boat navigation about this

I’ll let you know when he gets back to me

It’s not that uncommon, too much reliance on a small screen in open water.

I think the Gipsy Moth had a very similar incident near Tahiti.

I agree it’s not unheard of, just seems a major mistake in a race with all the training, knowledge and on hand.

Mate says operator error and a third party chart that looses the reefs zoomed out

Yes the plotter would have warned of entering shallow water if they’d asked it to

Also the crew may have just responded to wind shift

Maybe it will polish out… 😉

It’s not like they are stuck somewhere to difficult… 😉

Nothing a bit of duct tape won’t fix.

That’l buff right out