TWC Breaking News–Orange Peeling….: Guess it was premature to suggest Orange II wasn’t losing any more bits and pieces….Bruno Peyron reports that through the night a loud and increasing hull vibration forced him to bring the big cat to a stop for a little underwater inspection. Over the side goes Vladimir Dzalba-Lyndis, a professional combat diver. Using a spotlight he discovers that the fairing around the boat’s S-drive propeller is cracked and water is forcing its way in…which would eventually lead to serious hull delamination. Peyron is not quitting the JV race yet. Instead, armed with a hurriedly concocted “how-to” e-mail from Multiplast, the boat’s builders, he’s headed for the Cape Verde island of Fogo, 90 miles away. There, he will anchor Orange II and attempt to make an underwater repair. This from Orange II HQ:

“Yann Penfornis, architect with the Multiplast yard, explained that two solutions could be envisaged: “if the S Drive fairing is still in place, then the crack should be repaired by applying a “strapping”–which means stretching a wide strap saturated with epoxy resin over the crack to consolidate the whole area. If the fairing has been torn off, then it will be necessary to cut it as close to the hull as possible. The main difficulty for such an operation is to find enough air capacities (it can last several hours). Unfortunately, there is no compressor onboard to refill the 3 diving bottles. The second difficulty is to saw off the aluminum S Drive (19 mm thick in its frontal area) underwater with plain handsaws.”

TWC admires the spirit, Bruno, but give it up. There’s no way a quick and dirty repair is going to survive the 25,000 miles of hard sailing remaining. And even if it does, Orange II can kiss any hope of a JV record good-bye, as both Geronimo and Cheyenne press on. And even if both of those boats suffer the same fate, Orange II isn’t even beating Orange I at the moment. No doubt the sponsor will be disappointed, but that’s the big, bad world of multihull speed sailing. Wonder if it was that shark they hit….



Peeved Peyron: “Holy Merde, all the duct tape and epoxy in the world probably isn’t enough to get this floating lemon around the globe…”