His repairs seem to be going ok.
Bit more to do yet. Looks like it's strong enough for relatively gentle loads (i.e. what he's sailing in now) with some heavy duty reinforcing yet to be fitted ready for the southern ocean.
Looking forward to him putting his foot down.
Strangely, last night I started wondering if he has a dyson cordless vac on board for keeping the place tidy!!!!
Surely in the ocean he'd be better off with a Shark?
Oh chapeau 😂
LinkedOut has broken a foil - Jean le Cam looking more likely all the while!
Apivia looking fast, so long as it's in one piece.
LeCam is looking good...
Alex back underway
If trying to keep track of the Vendee boats wasn't bad enough I have also spotted that 3 Ultime trimarans have started an attempt on the Jules Verne Trophy for fastest time round the world.
Day and a half in and they are already between the Azores & Canaries with avg speeds around 30kts.
Only tracker site I have found is via the Sodebo team here: https://tropheejulesverne.sodebo.com/#cartographie
Anyone know where general news can be found?
I only know of two - Sodebo and Gitana
This Gitana tracker has both those boats (and a virtual third boat which is the current record).
It’s good spectator sport!
Poor progress from Hugo Boss over the last 4 hours, only 5.4 knots VMG at the 2030 UTC report, when others in the same breeze are doing double. I fear his repairs may not have worked.
I fear his repairs may not have worked.
He did say he had more repairs to do, and would do them overnight when it was cooler. So he's probably working on the repair, and not racing hard.
Alex T posted a video yesterday saying that the repairs were over.
Alex may have got his repairs done in the nick of time. Looks to me as if the leading pack are soon going to escape the high pressure system and get into stronger winds. Hoping Sam Davies can benefit from the decision to head south early and get the strong wind first. She and Louis Burton have had better boat speeds most of the day. Sam seems to be sailing a good race and her onboard reports are great to watch.
I fear his repairs may not have worked.
Def not the case - the repairs looked good and very solid.
He's just in poor conditions right now, but doing 8 knots in 9 knots of breeze is OK.
And now Alex has lost a rudder.
https://m.facebook.com/story.php?story_fbid=5360804197266922&id=124956890851705
Makes you wonder just how much UFO is floating about in the oceans. Gitana has just pulled out of the Jules Verne too after hitting something
Makes you wonder just how much UFO is floating about in the oceans
Basically, shit loads.
Worst are containers and there's 1000s of them floating around.
Re the rudder - I believe they normally take a spare blade but this maybe sounds more like damage to the steering/stock.
He can do without the starboard rudder at the moment.
Alex is out and limping to Cape Town.
matt_outandabout
Full Member
Alex is out and limping to Cape Town
Bolleux...
PRB appears to have been taking on water so Kevin Escoffier abandoned ship and Jean le Cam has picked him up from his life raft.
It's one problem after another with this race!
I wonder if Le Cam can keep racing with a passenger on board. It would seem a bit unfair for his race to be over due to someone else's misfortune. Food might become a problem onboard, maybe they could arrange a drop for them, though they don't get close to land other than Cape Horn.
It’s one problem after another with this race!
At least they're unlikely to pierce the armco and explode in a ball of flame. Not guaranteed but they can probably cross that off the list.
Le Cam is in the area and has spotted him but not yet been able to recover Escoffier.
In the meantime night has fallen, two more boats sent in to try and fish him out of his liferaft, gonna be a hectic night.
Just checked the tracker and saw JLC at 90 degrees to the track - first I heard about it!
Sincerely hope JLC can pull him aboard
Pretty certain it’s the end of his race according to the rules, which makes it even more fantastic that he’s given up his race to rescue.
I guess it comes as part of the make-up for those willing to race the southern ocean that they’re also prepared to give it up when needed, but still, chapeau.
Did you see Alex’s video earlier? Not surprisingly seemed quite cut up to be pulling out. Best of luck to him.
I guess their competitors are pretty much the only viable rescue service. You’d have to have confidence that anyone would come to your rescue otherwise you’d be completely nuts to sail into that part of the ocean with those risks. It must be one of those unwritten rules (perhaps it is written), you have to enact a rescue if asked.
Did you see Alex’s video earlier? Not surprisingly seemed quite cut up to be pulling out.
He seemed to be a broken man, unsurprisingly
They've made allowances for a second person on board before - but I'm struggling to remember who and what the detail was.
Let's hope Escoffier is on another boat shortly. A scary time for him.
It was leCam
https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.theguardian.com/sport/2009/jan/07/sailor-alive-south-pacific
Mike Golding rescued Alex Thompson in the southern ocean during a previous round the world single handed race (5 Oceans 2006). MG Sailed back upwind around 100 miles in storm conditions to perform the rescue. that was a stage race rather than non stop and In the end they were dismasted with both aboard and had to retire.
Latest report seems that Kevin Escoffier has been spotted in a life raft but its now dark so hasn't been recovered yet. Three other boats in or approaching the area to help. Has PRB sunk? General rule is you stay with the boat as long as you can.
Latest update says Le Cam saw Escoffier and spoke with him but then lost him manoeuvring. Must mean he has no VHF or EPIRB on the raft. Explains why others have been asked to assist. Severity has escalated significantly.
Must mean he has no VHF or EPIRB on the raft. Explains why others have been asked to assist. Severity has escalated significantly.
That's not good and I hope you've drawn the wrong conclusion (in the nicest possible way). I wondered why they'd sent the others when le cam already seemed to have made contact. I guess an element of back up regardless. He's either had a very rough ride in the raft (even by raft standards) or the boat went down bloody quick or both.
Fingers crossed that things are better in the morning.
First words from Kevin:
It was like in those films whent a vessel goes down but then worse.
What happened in a handfull of seconds:
Planted the vessel and then stem folded 90 degrees.
Just had time to send an distress message.
Next wave hit and all electronics went dead.
Folding a vessel in two....
I have done some but this one....
No exagerating, really almost exact words in my best french english tranlation(small disclaimer rather fluent in both but neither is my mother tongue)
Seems like a bit more then some water ingress. To note this vessel had extensive damage a couple of months ago I believe.
Blimey.
Clean underwear for Monsieur Escoffier please.
What an epic event this is, shows the very best of humans. It does feel however that the margins for boats are just too fine and the organisers need to consider some more robust minimum durability standards.
It sounds like a similar failure to the one that started to occur on Hugo Boss. In the post rescue video Kevin Escoffier mentions that 200kg of carbon fibre reinforcing had been added to the boat before the race. They have sealed bulkheads to keep the boats afloat in the event of most situations, but breaking in half is catastrophic. It's worth noting that PRB was not originally fitted with foils and these are a recent addition.
The big ocean races have always brought a degree of gear failure but the Vendée does seem to suffer more than (say) the Ocean Race in terms of boat fatal (rather than human fatal) incidents.
Having said that there must be some special challenges around designing a Vendee/short handed ocean racer - trying to keep weight down for ease of handling when you don't have a crew to share the workload, the extra impact that not having a live helmsman at the wheel will have on the structure (I'm assuming autopilot systems don't yet have AI to match the kind of processing a human does), 75-90 days without a layover, less hands to run daily maintenance and to and to fix/jury rig in event of gear failures are presumably all complications that need to feature in your design.
The people who design and build these things are very talented but like any elite sport they're going to want to push the margins at least in some areas in the pursuit of victory.
A translated quote from Escoffier.
More detail on Sailing Anarchy.
...so I pulled the liferaft from under the water to put it on the deck of the cockpit, and when I was trying to secure it the boat heeled over, a wave broke over the deck and threw me in the water with the liferaft, so I didn't have a choice in fact between staying on the boat and going in the water, so then I was in the water, I activated the liferaft, I had the grab bag I had managed to get a hold of on my back and a distress case I was keeping with me, that was inside the boat, up high, that's how I had been able to recover it, and at that point I was in the water with all that, I managed to activate the liferaft and climb into it, ..
It seems he had a minute or two maximum. He had put on survival suit but couldn't get to the middle life raft as it was 3m underwater. Suggestion the keel was attached to the rear section, dragging the boat down with mast upright.
Instead he grabbed his emergency bag from cockpit, then as he released the rear life raft he was forcibly washed overboard...from the water he activated the liferaft and climbed aboard.
That.
Was.
Close.
Amazing job by Jean le cam, finding him in the dark with many tacks and 5m seas. From what I could read escoffiers beacon didn’t work properly so they had to predict his position with drift models. I also read that it was a PRB boat that rescued Jean le cam in 2009! Plus ca change etc etc
trying to keep weight down for ease of handling when you don’t have a crew to share the workload
Hull weight makes very little/zero difference to the crew workload - but it makes a massive difference to how long it takes to get round the course!
Hence the boats are built down to a weight the designer thinks will make it.
Sodebo about to overtake Charal while running the Jules Vernes trophy - they’ll steam right past the whole fleet!
Edit - and now ARKEA PAPREC has hit a UFO, damaged a foil & is leaking.
At this rate there might not be much of a fleet to overtake!
The rate we're going there will be a line of 'old school' boats leading at the end...
I did say at the beginning of this thread that getting the balance between speed and reliability is very important.
(Not that you can do much about a UFO but they're working on a radar system that spots stuff up to 800m away)
(Not that you can do much about a UFO but they’re working on a radar system that spots stuff up to 800m away)
I thought a couple of the boats already have that system OSCAR. In some cases even using AI linked to the autopilot to take avoiding action automatically.
That truly sounds like a terrifying experience for M. Escoffier. The relief for both him and Le Cam when he pulled himself onto Le Cam's boat must have been unbelievable.
I presume Kevin can't help at all and just has to keep out of Jean's way until he gets evacuated off the boat?
