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Pity poor Nick Moloney. He survives the battle for sponsroship. He survives the Southern Ocean. He survives a brutal collision with an Unidentified Floating Object (UFO). He survives a variety of mechanical and charging problems. And just as he is approaching the downhill stretch to the finish of the Vendee Globe…Skandia’s keel falls off (Okay, maybe he didn’t survive that collision with the UFO). Here are the sordid details:

“The Open 60 Skandia overnight suffered a major technical failure to the keel, which has led to the keel breaking away from the boat, approximately 30cm below the hull. The boat is still upright, with no sails up, and water ballast tanks full to keep the maximum amount of stability possible.

Skandia skipper, Nick Moloney, contacted his shore team at 0500 GMT this morning [25.1.05] to report that he had a problem but it was not until twilight, three hours later, that he was able to fully assess the damage. In the intervening period Moloney stabilised the boat as much as possible by reducing sail and filling the yacht’s central water ballast tanks, with a total of over 5 tons of water. At just after 0830 GMT, the keel completely broke away.

Skandia’s position is approximately 120 miles south of Rio de Janeiro. The wind is around 22-25 knots from the north with a 1 to 1.5 metre swell. The priority for his shore team is to secure the safety of the skipper and they are working on getting an escort boat to Skandia as soon as possible. Nick is unharmed, is safe on board Skandia and dealing with the situation as best he can. “I can’t believe this, I just can’t believe it, things were just starting to look better for me and I was really getting locked in to the thought of the finish in Les Sables,” said Nick. His race is over but all thoughts of that are secondary to securing his safety and that of the boat.

Moloney was on day 80 of the Vendée Globe with under 5,000 miles left to go on the solo round the world course. It was his first participation in the race and it dramatically ends his long-held dream to complete 3 big round the world sailing goals – of crewed round the world [1997-98 Whitbread on board Toshiba], fastest non-stop round the world [2002 Jules Verne Trophy on board Orange] and, finally, his ultimate goal of solo, non-stop around the world which has now cruely come to an end.”

“Major technical failure.” Is that what they call it now when the keel falls off? Nick is now under engine power, headed toward Rio and a tow vessel. He’s had a chance to talk with his shore team via sat phone, and here is his description of the failure:

“Well I’ve been struggling to go round this weather system and as I started to see the end of the tunnel, I made my last tack to clear the coast north of Rio, and I tacked about 3 o’clock in the morning. About an hour later I just finished tidying up and sorting everything out. I sat down at the chart table and I started to get some sleep and I heard a bang, it sounded like plastic breaking and I wasn’t terribly concerned and I started trying to drift off to sleep and the boat just started heeling over more and more and as then the boat speed dropped to 4 knots. I went out on deck and I was saying to myself I think we’re going to tip over. I ran down below because I just thought the keel had released because I’ve had a problem with my keel dump switch and I tried to sort it out yesterday and I thought well maybe I’ve pulled out the wrong wire or something and the keel’s dumped to leeward. I went down there and the keel head was the right way and I was looking and I’m thinking, am I tired? Am I looking at this situation clearly or what? What’s going on? And then I tried to de-power and keep sailing and the boat was on it’s ear, completely on it’s ear. I just ran to the windward rail with a torch and I’m trying to look over the side to see the bulb, there were lots of waves breaking over the boat because there was about 25 knots of wind at this stage and quite big waves. I couldn’t see the keel and then I laid on the deck and hung right over the hull and I could see the bulb on the centreline of the boat and I thought oh this is wrong, because it’s gotta be out to the other side. So I went down below and de-powered a bit more, and went down and rang Mark [Turner, Project Director OC] and said I think I’ve broken the keel and we were sort of both talking about it and we both came to the conclusion that’s it couldn’t be possible – and that I must have a big net or something. I couldn’t get the boat speed over 6 knots and the boat was just tipping over, so we got Neil Graham [Technical Director, OC] on the line and Neil said if you are losing your stability there’s a problem with the keel, so get the sails off and just hang out until daylight to have a look. It wasn’t until daylight that I could actually see the fin. I chucked my goggles on and I hung out of the escape hatch in the stern and I looked under the hull and I could see the keel was vertical and swinging, and I obviously knew that wasn’t very good. So I ran back inside and I got the endoscope which is a small 90 degree sight tube and I saw the top, looked like the top foot of the keel was together and then the rest of it was snapped off and hanging down so the top of the fin was 45 degrees which it shouldn’t be with the rams pushing the head over and then the keel’s hanging vertically and swinging. I rang Mark and said the keels broken and it’s gonna come off and I really, really was sure it was gonna come off, so I got the rest of the sails down and filled the ballast tanks to try and stabilise the boat. Then it was just a terrible thing to have to do…to break the seal on the engine and engage the engine and that was it for me – the race was over. Then anyway I couldn’t motor upwind [towards Rio] as the engine kept overheating and we went downwind and we tried dropping the keel on to the centre line, and then soon after it snapped off completely.”

Totally brutal. Grant Dalton, who has been around the world more than most, always says that that part of the South Atlantic is the place he fears most in a round the world race. Boats are coming out of the Southern Ocean, fatigued and battered, and then they hit this zone, which often throws crazy weather and brutal head seas at them. The result: rigs come down…and keels fall off. Nick wasn’t the first to have his boat fall apart here. And he won’t be the last…



Bummer: “Uh-oh. We’re suddenly sitting very high in the water…”

All hail the wackos who insist on surfing and sailing even when the conditions are positively Siberian. While the rest of the world waits wimpily for the warm weather of spring and summer, they just throw on extra layers and hit the water. Or ice. Or whatever. So here is my ongoing homage to the Hardass Wetasses. Up first is a couple of guys I came across in a Sailing Anarchy forum. They wanted to go cat sailing, so they went cat sailing (after they chipped away the ice, of course). Here are some pictures of their two hour spin (you can find the full set here):



“Damn, what a fine day for a sail…”



“Cr*p! An icicle just went down my neck…”



“What? You thought I would look normal…?”



“Hmm, this is probably what the Titanic sidedecks looked like…”



“Boy, sheet ice really locks in the sail shape…”

Not shivering yet? Then check out their video…

And that’s not all. Windsurfers are just as stupid, I mean gung-ho. And thanks to TWC reader Uncle Bob (aka Bob Steele) we’ve got it on tape. Just check out the video of this determined Dude as he makes like Shackleton trying to get across the brash ice so he can hop on his board…



“I can’t believe all the sailors we’re seeing these days…”

For those of you who have always believed that “cruising multihull” is an oxymoron; for those of you who believe that living large and sailing very, very fast are incompatible; for those of you who insist that having a couple of tons of lead under your feet is the only way to go to sea: I have one simple request. Watch this video (Quicktime only; if you don’t have it get it here for free). What is it? Well, it’s a massive cruising cat called a Gunboat 62 (designed by Gino Morrelli and Pete Melvin, who also ran up a little number called “Cheyenne”) absolutely running over an 80-foot Reichel/Pugh maxi monohull (don’t know which one). Like it? Go charter it. You can only imagine how hard the Gunboat crew were laughing (and how hard the maxi crew were swearing) as the video boat appeared to add insult to injury. What’s the soundtrack, you ask? Very appropriately, it’s “Wipeout”…



“Hey, Biff, wanna run those small fry down, too?…”Nah, let’s give it a rest, Rodney. I’m still chuckling about that sled, plus I’m waiting for Mari Cha to come along…”

If you ever wanted proof that ocean racing can be a cruel, cruel sport, just consider that Ellen MacArthur has finally fallen behind Francis Joyon after leading for almost 43 days, a lead which stood at more than four days when she rounded Cape Horn. Latest report here. All along MacArthur and her shore team had been looking forward to the South Atlantic, (almost but not quite) gloating over the slow passage Joyon had from Cape Horn to the Equator and figuring Ellen would be able to run up the score on this piece of ocean. Never in a million years did they dream she’d be more than four days slower, the victim of light winds, capricious weather systems and the black humor of the weather gods. Ellen, as is her nature, is hanging extremely tough, and will fight this thing all the way until the end, but the weather ahead so far doesn’t seem to offer any miracles and Joyon put up some pretty big runs over this period. Here’s MacArthur:

“I am trying to be positive – you know it’s been exceptionally difficult, it feels like everything has been against us in the Southern Hemisphere and we’ve not only lost out on Francis but lost four days in a period where we should have gained theoretically because he was very slow in this area. So things have been terrible, quite frankly, and trying to come to terms with that and come to terms with the fact that the weather for the next week is pretty bad as well, then that is pretty hard to deal with. But what can we do? We can only do our best and we can’t do any more than that…

The record is definitely within our sights – I’m not going to let go of that until the last second-hand ticks over, that’s for sure. We’ve been working on this project for two years, I’ve now been at sea for over 50 days and now is not the time that I am going to throw my hands up in the air and give up, no way. We’re level with Francis – we’re not three days or five days behind him and we still have a chance. But we only have a chance if the weather is kind to us – the next three days are going to be terrible, we won’t cross the Equator until the 28th and until then we are going to be in pretty light conditions. Once we cross the Equator, we have to see if we get stuck in the Doldrums or not, and that’s another question mark. We could get stuck there for 24 hours and, if that’s the case, obviously we’re in even more trouble. A lot of things can come into play and we’ve still got a very, very long way to sail…”

Brave words. But you can just feel it slipping away, can’t you…



“I always seem to get better wind if I strip down, soooo….”

Bruno Peyron and his boys (all thirteen of them) took off on their non-stop, round-the-world record attempt early this morning. They’re gunning for Olivier De Kersuason’s Jules Verne record of 63 days, 14 hours, and Steve Fossett’s outright record of 58 days, 9.5 hours. Peyron wants the outright record bad (in fact, he’s only taken food for 58 days). Orange II is probably the fastest oceangoing multihull on the planet, and owns the 24-hour record of 706 miles. But she hasn’t done anything else of note, and Peyron was not at all happy when Fossett stiffed the Jules Verne committee during his record passage, separating the Jules Verne record from the outright record. Amazingly, Peyron and his weather team are looking all the way to the South Atlantic high, and saying that they chose to leave now in order to set up for a fast passage of this traditional weather trap two weeks into the voyage. If they get that one right, hats off!

You can follow along at Peyron’s fancy-ass Flash site here. Plenty of good stuff–news, photos, crew bios–including a pretty good departure video over on the Video page which has some footage of Orange II going fast, very fast (one shot shows a very odd flip-up windscreen for the driver). Orange II has the horses to do this. The question is–and this is always the question–will she stay in one piece for a full lap…



“The Old Man must be serious. We’ll be living on cigarettes by the time we hit the finish, and, even worse, there’s absolutely no Espresso…”

I wish I could say I was at Key West Race Week. But I’m in London for the week. So no Wetass Chronicles until Monday the 24th. Have a good one…

Have A Wetass Weekend…:

Ellen’s Not Solo: “Well, he keeps me company, but he can’t trim or steer for sh*t…”

Annals Of Adventure–Maud Fontenoy Takes To The Pacific: The last time TWC checked in on French endurance rower Maud Fontenoy was 2003, after she had just become the first woman to row the Atlantic west to east. It only took her a Sisyphean 117 days, and now–presumably just recovered from her blisters–she is back. On Wednesday she set out across the Pacific, to attempt to become the first person to row from Lima, Peru to Tahiti. Maud is 27, and her aim is to match the 1947 voyage made by Thor Heyerdahl’s Kon-Tiki, except instead of a sinking reed raft she’s jockeying a high-tech 23-foot rowboat. It’s a mere 4900 miles, and so far she has covered, umm let’s see, 18.9. It took ol’ Thor 101 days to make the trip, but Maud expects to be out there a lot longer. How long? Know one really knows, but Maud is saying maybe 5 months. Yup, that’s months. You can follow Maud’s mad journey on her website, and over at the estimable Ocean Rowing Society. It takes a special mentality to put oneself through this sort of epic voyage into masochism, and Maud is typically French in her philosophy, saying according to one pre-start report:

“I know I’m going to have different problems, big storms and loneliness,” she said. “But you know the victory will be bigger since it was difficult at the beginning.”

“I’m going to put my hand in the ocean to touch a dolphin and meet whales and be in total harmony with nature,” she said. “I’m looking for a different way of living, a simple life. Just me and the ocean.”

It will certainly be a different way of living, but I doubt it will be simple. Go for it, Maud…



Maud Fontenoy, The “Before” Picture: “They look pretty good now, don’t they…?”

Diver Dave Shaw Died On Video…: This being the age of miniature cameras and reality TV, it’s no surprise that Dave Shaw was recording his attempted recovery of the remains of fellow diver Deon Dreyer at the bottom of the deadly cave known as Boesmansgat. The helmet-cam Shaw wore came up with his body Wednesday, and the footage shows his vain attempts to get Dreyer into a body bag and then his last minutes of life as he tried to return toward the surface. The most complete report is in the Cape Argus paper, and it has the grim details. TV cameraman Gordon Hiles, who outfitted Shaw with the helmet-cam, and diver Peter Herbst explain what’s on the tape:

“He gets to the bottom and moves towards Deon’s body and pulls out the specially made bodybag. He goes through the activity of getting the bag around the body. There’s a bit of silt that blocks the view for a while, then you see him rotating the body and realising (Dreyer’s) tanks are not jammed (in the bottom of the cave), they’re loose.

“So he attempts to get the bag over the tanks as well. Then at that point there’s no more activity and then Dave goes back to the shot line to start his ascent,” Hiles said.

‘Harder and harder and harder. Then there’s silence’

“But then exactly 26 minutes into the dive all activity stops and then his breathing as well.

“Nothing specific shows what kind of problem he was having, but the footage will be reviewed by various experts to try and determine exactly what is going on.”

Diver Peter Herbst, one of the two divers who recovered the bodies with police diver assistance on Wednesday, also saw the video footage. He said: “On the tape you can hear Dave breathing. Harder and harder and harder. Then there’s silence.

“It’s much too soon to say exactly what went wrong but, from the bit of footage I’ve just seen, it appears that Dave was working too hard.

“At first it looks like everything was going fine. He’d got to the body and he was working.

“From the footage it appears that Dave’s breathing then started to get worse and worse.

“It looks as if he ran out of time. It looks like he tried to give up and get out, but he got entangled in the cave line.

“He kept trying to cut the line, but he couldn’t. He was breathing faster and faster.”

Trouble at 270-plus meters is deadly trouble. Shaw’s dive equipment will be next up for scrutiny. But the more detail that emerges, the more impossible, and potentially lethal, Shaw’s original goal of recovering Dreyer’s body seems…



“What can I say? I lived to challenge myself, and I was sure I could pull it off…”

Compare And Contrast…: Check out this great picture of Mari Cha IV and the J-Boat Velsheda alongside one another. The J-Boats were the most formidable racing design of the 1930s and Mari Cha IV is without doubt the fastest monohull ever built. I guess yacht design has evolved just a bit, though I’d be more than happy to sail on either one…



“Heh-heh. I’d kick your ass, you worm-eaten wooden antique…”

(Photo snagged from Sailing Anarchy)