Jules Verne Jumble–Orange Peeled: Well, TWC proves prescient. “Technical incident” was in fact a euphemism for “Holy Merde, the bow fell off”–in this case the false bow on the starboard hull. The big maxi-cats are built with breakaway sections on their bows–called “crash boxes”–so if they hit something at 30 knots they can keep sailing and don’t end up with a hull full of water, which would almost certainly pull the boat apart. Getting these sacrificial bows right is very tricky engineering. They have to be built light enough to break off on impact, but not so light they just fall off as they smack through the waves at high speed. Bruno Peyron says he is positive that the boat did not hit anything, that the crew would have felt the impact, so it appears that the crash boxes on both bows need to be rebuilt and reinforced, which is exactly what Peyron plans to do. “If we had been in the middle of the Pacific, the question of turning back would not even have been mentioned. But in that case, after only one day at sea, it would not have been reasonable to carry on, knowing we had the possibility to come back easily,” he said in a radio interview. Interestingly, this is exactly the same problem the previous generation of maxi-cats designed and built by Multiplast suffered. “Club Med” lost a bow crossing the Atlantic, and then-skipper Grant Dalton had to get into a screaming match with designer Gilles Ollier–who kept insisting that the boat must have hit something–to get the plans to the boat so he could rebuild and strengthen the bows. That process took Dalton and Club Med weeks, but Peyron hopes that Orange II will be back at the yard by Sunday, and that the bows can be rebuilt in just 2 or 3 days. TWC is skeptical, but Peyron has gone through this before. In 2002, Orange I set out and lost the top of her mast. Peyron returned to port, fixed the mast, and set off again…to set the current record. If things work out correctly, maybe Peyron and De Kersauson can bring their boats to the start line at the same time, and race head to head around the world. Would be great, or what? Come on guys, throw us a frickin’ bone here…



It Doesn’t Look Like This Anymore…

(Photo: James Boyd, The Daily Sail)