Global Racing Update–Bang! Crash!: The front half of the Vendee Globe fleet is in the Southern Ocean, and the carnage has begun. Daily report here. Position report here. First major casualty is Alex Thomson on Hugo Boss. This morning, in winds of 45 knots gusting to 50, the gooseneck (which connects the boom to the mast) sheared off and punctured the deck. Here’s Thomson’s description of the disaster:

“I had lots of wind, 40 knots gusting more. I was under 2 reefs, ORC and had taken down by staysail. I went below. The waves were very steep and the boat was slamming. All of a sudden I heard a big crack, the very distinctive sound of breaking carbon. My first thought was for the mast but the noise was coming from lower down. I checked down at the keel but that was ok and then I looked up and I could see daylight. The base of the gooseneck had collapsed through the deck leaving a hole 1ft by 1ft, the gooseneck half in, half out of the boat.”

Thomson is now headed for Cape Town, where he will try to find shelter to make a repair so he can stay in the race. You can hear him recount the whole incident on the Vendee Globe audio page. Even is he manages to stay in, he’s out of the running (Roland Jourdain on SILL, the former owner of Thomson’s boat had this to say: “I can’t believe that he has torn the gooseneck off. If this is the case, it means he’s really been putting the gear through the mill.” You can just here Jourdain thinking: “Rookie!”) And back in the chasing pack, Conrad Humphreys on Hellomoto also had some excitement:

“I had an awesome day, the breeze filled in and I stuck up the Code 5 and full main, pushing hard. At sunset I decided to keep the Code 5 up, the wind was topping out at 30 knots and the seaway was pretty ugly with waves breaking over the boat and hitting her side on–the pilot was doing a great job though! I went below to download the latest weather file and it showed the breeze increasing to 35-38 knots, this low had more guts in it than forecast, so I went on deck to furl the sail when suddenly the halyard snapped and the 200 square metre Code 5 dropped into the water and we ran straight over the top of it doing 20 knots. I dropped the mainsail as it was gusting 32 knots and didn’t want to rag the main, and the boat was quite unstable.

I tried to pull the top of the sail back on board as this is the only Code 5 I have, it’s invaluable, and I knew it wouldn’t break if we ran over it, it’s very strong. But pulling 200 m2 of 3.4 ounce cloth out of the water nearly broke me–it must have weighed several tons with all the water in it. HELLOMOTO was rolling all over the place in the pitch black. Twice I went over the guard rails as the sail again and again got ripped out of my hands. Miracles sometimes happen and after I had given up the fight, the sail drifted out from under the boat and was picked up by a gust and blown onboard! It then took an hour to stuff it down the fore hatch and get the genoa out and mainsail up again.”

It definitely ain’t easy out there…

Nor is it going very smoothly for Ellen and B&Q. She had to slow the boat to check out some movement of her main rudder, and she’s now about a half hour behind Francis Joyon’s pace. She couldn’t find any rudder damage, so she’s back up to speed (daily report here), sailing hard for the Cape Verde islands, and on track for an Equator crossing next Tuesday (her ninth day). Here’s a little of what Ellen had to say about the past 24 hours:

“Trying to sleep on poor B&Q who is relentlessly powering through the oceans is far from easy – this was never going to be an easy record to break. Now I think, and maybe just in the past few days, I realise what the scale of the task really is… I have felt under immense pressure since leaving – the pressure of that clock that never stops, and those minutes that never stop flowing. I’ve felt nervous, and tired, and generally pretty damn stressed since we left too.

We have had our fair share of problems since leaving ranging from leaks in the water system, to a dangerous creaking noise from the rudders. Some frighten the life out of you and others just make you realise that the list of things out here never ever stops. Each problem is just a few more grams of your energy gently sapping away…”

Hang in there, Ellen. If you want to sneak a peak anytime round the clock to see how she is doing, here’s a handy-dandy link that puts you straight through to a race viewer that has all the nav and record data. Danger: potentially addictive…



Rudder Wrongs: “Damn this thing. It’s got to last another 22,000 miles…”