Transat Carnage: Jeez, you head off for the weekend and all hell breaks loose in the fleet. And ironically, it’s all in the 60-foot monohull fleet. Usually they are pretty reliable, leaving all the exploding boat stuff to the 60-foot trimaran fleet. So let’s see. It all started on Friday late, with the 360 degree roll and dismasting of sometime race leader Virbac, in tricky 40-knot winds and 20-foot seas. That was the second dismasting for skipper Jean Pierre Dick in the past six months, and is particularly brutal because The Transat is supposed to be his qualifying race for the Vendee Globe solo race around the world this Fall (click here to listen to Dick explain how it happened). Then, early this morning, it was PRB‘s turn to drop the mast. PRB was in third place at the time and also getting blasted by heavy winds. Finally, just hours ago, Swiss skipper Bernard Stamm, who had also led the race at times, set off his distress signal. His keel had, umm, fallen off. This has a very simple and brutal result: the boat inverts. Luckily, the engineers that design these machines are well aware that this is a possibility, so the boats are designed to be able to float upside down. Stamm is inside, and safe for the moment, and the Canadian maritime authorities, who are suddenly very busy, are on their way.

And the 60-foot trimarans? Just skating along, with leader Michel Desjoyeaux due into Boston tomorrow…



Stamm’s Ride: “Wow, that’s a lot of keel vibration. I wonder what the hell is going…Ohhh, sh******t!”