Vendee Globe 2012

Vendee

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Sad and pitiful-these racing guys have an OBLIGATION to watch for fishing boats. The fishermen are trying to earn a living and these guys should avoid them at all costs. story: http://www.vendeeglobe.org/en/news/article/3083/bureau-valley-hit-by-fishing-boat.html

 

They need to install a offshore gate waypoint to keep the racing yachts off the coast and out of fishing traffic.

 

the last incident involving bureau valee was ~400 nm off shore... how far should they go?

another interesting point from one post from the vendee globe article:

"This does not only apply to Solo racing. I cruise solo long distance and I think there are 2 options. 1/ all vessels including fishing boats observe the rules and keep a visual watch 100% of the time. If you cannot you must not sail! OR 2/ all vessels which cannot keep a watch all the time must be equipped with radar and/or AIS set up and alarmed - mechanical watch keeping At present long distance solo sailors including those in the Vendee Globe break the rules. I believe that this rule needs changing because technology has overtaken the situation which existed when the rule was made. Therefore option 2 should become a legal solution as an alternative to the existing rule which governs watch keeping. Furthermore whether fishermen like it or not, for safety reasons, they must be obliged to have a transmit and receive AIS system and must alarm it and use it. I do not condemn the fishermen but the fact is that fishing boats probably outnumber other boats at sea and therefore can be a hasard. Finally it is best that boats which are sailed solo identify themselves as such with their AIS name - the Vendee Globe boats are doing that!"

is it true that mechanical watchkeeping is against the rules?

if so that needs to be changed!

i just can say from my own experience that fishing boaters give a damn sh** about sailing yachts - if they are busy with fishing or not...
so yes - the sailors have an OBLIGATION to watch out, but only because fishers do not! no matter if they have the right of way or not...

 

I sail for a living. Fishing boats are coastal. What is coastal ? Good question.

AIS ? fishing boats aren't required to use it. AIS CPA means nothing when the fish boat is going in circles . Radar CPA ? again, useless with fishing boats.

Any device that send hundreds of false alarms to a single handed sailor is useless and will be disabled.

A fisherman may not understand a race boat. They see a sailboat...assume 6knots, then get back to work...little do they know that the sailboat is moving at 15 knts and will be on them fast.

Best to keep single handers at sea...offshore , safe and out of vessel collision trouble.

 

Sad to hear about the collision. The fishing boats trolling & pulling in nets have the right of way though. Sailboats are supposed to give way to fishing boats in the process of fishing/trawling because they are limited in their ability to maneuver. Too bad his surface radar didn't warn him. If he turned it off while sleeping that's all the worse. Seems like a game of Russian roulette to sail through such an area.

Here is the pecking order, if you will:

Overtaken vessel (top priority)

•Vessels not under command
•Vessels restricted in their ability to maneuver
•Vessels constrained by draft
•Fishing vessels engaged in fishing, with gear deployed
•Vessels restricted in their ability to maneuver
•Sailing vessels
•Power driven vessels

Ref: http://www.boatus.com/foundation/guide/navigation_4.html

 

A fishing boat is a poor radar target at sea for a sailing boat with its radar mounted down low and screen full of sea scatter. I don't know the available electric power on a race boat, Radar is a power hungry tool. Normally it would be on standby, with scans taken as appropriate.

I didnt read about the incident . Day or night ? Long liners at night would be my guess. They work deep sea off the continental shelf. Difficult for an alert sailor to spot a low freeboard longliner flying its dim..IM FISHING ..red status mastlightt .

 

I read somewhere on the Vendee site it happened around 0300. I sailed with a Clipper racing crew off the French & Portueguese coasts last August. Our SeaPro nav/radar software was lit up like a Christmas tree with boats most of the time. Shipping lane traffic aside, there were almost always fishing boats on the horizon at all times. Sailing without a watch is just plain stupid. Sailing solo as in this case is just flat out risky. It's a total roll of the dice. Even if they set a buoy some place 500 miles out there's boats out there too.

 

yup....dangerous game

 

Vendee

Sam Davies, one of very few female ocean racers, has dismasted. She's ok and the boat does not appear to be damaged.

http://www.vendeeglobe.org/en/news.html

Race Tracking: http://tracking2012.vendeeglobe.org/en/

 

Vendee

From Scuttlebutt tonight:

VENDEE GLOBE: CATASTROPHIC RISKS IGNORED
By Elaine Bunting, Yachting World
"We've already lost one keel in this race, and it's quite possibly not the
only one that's going to go."

So says one of the leading yacht designers for the Vendee Globe, a race
that has been blighted with a disastrous series of keel and mast failures.
Designers involved despair that the class - executive and skippers - has
not listened to their suggestions of a solution and are vulnerable to
repeated failures that risk lives, cost a fortune and are putting off
sponsors.

While the Volvo Ocean Race has had no keel failures in the last three
editions, the Vendee Globe has continued for well over a decade racking up
calamitous breakages and perilous mid-ocean rescues.

Admittedly, the loss of Safran's keel is a special case. It features the
first ever titanium fin, and you can see in photos from Thierry Martinez
that it broke off about a half metre below the axle. This massively
expensive item was specially made by the sponsor, a huge French defence
contractor (not an illustrious showcase of their expertise, it must be
said).

But the point is that Safran's keel failure is the latest in a very long
line of major failures, and few involved are confident that the problems
have been properly tackled.

Why is this class not learning? Why is the Vendee Globe starting again with
such little prospect of the boats being more reliable, or safer, than in
the past?

To understand the scale of the problem, you need only look at the
statistics. Since the 1996/7 race when Thierry Dubois, Tony Bullimore and
Raphael Dinelli were rescued from their upturned boats in the Southern
Ocean with hours to spare, there have been 17 keel failures in the class.

Rig losses, not always so serious, have been even worse. In the last five
years, 20 boats have been dismasted.

The worst part of all this is that designers have been proposing a possible
solution for years, but the class organisation and skippers who make the
rule can't agree among themselves and have simply not taken heed.

Last week I spoke to Xavier Guilbaud and Quentin Lucet from VPLP/Verdier,
the design team responsible for five of the six newest designs in the
fleet. They were clear that, as the class contemplates the possibility of a
move to a one-design, one of the options they favour is for a one-design
fin with different bulb weight options.

"That would allow teams to have different hull shape, ballast and sail
area, and choose how to drive the boat," says Guilbaud. He adds that it
would also help reduce costs.

British designer Merfyn Owen of Owen Clarke Design Group (responsible for
Mike Golding's Gamesa, Dominique Wavre's Mirabaud and Javier Sanso's
Acciona) is outspoken on the subject.

"That [a one-design keel] was my suggestion back in 2008. All the European
designers and Farr, without exception, are in favour of it. Let someone
else design it, no-one cares. We've all swallowed our egos and said it's a
good idea.

"Keel and rig failures are by far the main reasons why people are leaving
the race, but IMOCA are crap, they are just not listening to us. Maybe we
could have sorted this out some years ago, but they have not addressed
these problems. Not one iota, right up to the present." - Read on:
http://tinyurl.com/YW-111512

 

Vendee

Trouble for the "green" boat from Scuttlebutt Europe:

Javier Sanso Seeks Shelter Along The Coast

The ACCIONA Sailing Team has been informed by its skipper Javier "Bubi" Sanso that the boat ACCIONA 100% EcoPowered has had to modify its sailing route having suffered a little damage to the track of the main sail halyard whilst sailing in very harsh sea and wind conditions.

At around 18.00 on Wednesday 14th November the skipper from Mallorca saw his main sail come down after a piece of the mainsail halyard track system failed (the line used to raise and lower sails.)

Faced with the sudden dropping of the mainsail in winds of 30 knots and a rough sea with waves of up to four metres, Sanso was forced to modify his route from 213º to 147º and find a downwind position that would enable him to make a first assessment of the situation.

Sanso will look for calmer sea conditions that allow him to go up to the top of the mast and recover the part and the halyard and be able to continue sailing under full sail.

The damage is not serious as Sanso was keen to reassure his shore team and the situation is being monitored.

 

Vendee

News from SA front page: ( http://www.sailinganarchy.com/index_page1.php )

The once-rosy Vendee Globe is already beginning to unravel; Smashed and crashed are Kito and Louis Burton. De-titanized is Marc Guillemot. Untracked is Bubi Senso, and now one of the best things about this race – the perpetually smiling and effervescent Sam Davies, has lost a mast that just went around the world two years ago and was in great shape; she’s done smiling for the first time in ages.

That’s a quarter of the fleet in less than a week, and those of us who were hoping to see the Open 60s have a more durable showing than recent events would suggest are back to wondering whether even a third of the fleet will finish the 2012 VG. While Bubi and Burton should be able to get back into it after some repairs, IMOCA’s one-design proponents and the sponsors that support them get more ammunition with every breakage. There’s a lot to talk about on this subject, but we’ll see how the fleet survives the next few weeks before getting too deep into it.

But now we’ve got some breaking news that will throw plenty more fuel on the fire: Today the VG Race Director, Denis Horeau confirmed a report that as many as 8 boat were protested by the Race Committee for violating the Traffic Separation Scheme off Cape Finisterre. While a solo racer’s adherence to COLREGS is something of a joke (sleeping is a tough way to properly ‘maintain a watch’), the Sailing Instructions for the race require all skippers to follow the international laws, including those that require certain courses and changes to course in the presence of Traffic Separation Zones. A quick look at the race trackers shows who did and who didn’t, and in light of the ‘trawler collisions’ by Groupe Bel and Bureau Valle, it looks like the Jury may have a chance to really send a message to this fleet that it’s not OK to crash into fishing boats.

 

Good response from RC

 

"...We've already lost one keel in this race, and it's quite possibly not the
only one that's going to go."

So says one of the leading yacht designers for the Vendee Globe, a race
that has been blighted with a disastrous series of keel and mast failures.
Designers involved despair that the class - executive and skippers - has
not listened to their suggestions of a solution and are vulnerable to
repeated failures that risk lives, cost a fortune and are putting off
sponsors..."

Surely if the designers are agreeing to design equipment that they believe is inadequate...don't they bear part of the responsibility.

And my kids would now write " just sayin' "

 

Vendee

from the Vendee site:

1) At 2300hrs (French time) on Saturday, Jérémie Beyou (Maître CoQ) detected a malfunction of the hydraulic jack of his keel. He has taken advantage of the proximity of Cape Verde for shelter in order to inspect in more detail the system that allows the keel to move.

When Beyou warned his crew shortly before midnight, he was 70 miles (130 km) from the Cape Verde archipelago and making five knots. He should have found shelter among the islands by midday on Sunday.
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2) Meanwhile Zbigniew 'Gutek' Gutkowski (ENERGA) has heaved to, 500 west of the Canary Islands at the back of the fleet, waiting for the right moment to climb the mast and cutaway the gennaker wrapped around his forestay.

It is part of an ongoing struggle with his autopilot that has plagued him from the start. The 39-year-old Polish skipper came to a stop last night and was waiting for the wind to drop and swell to decrease, but his mission will be more perilous than Javier Sansó’s on Friday night, who was able to divert to Tenerife and find shelter in the lee of the island.

“The main thing is to get down the wrapped gennaker from the forestay,” Gutek said. “I have a sort of plan now how to do it but it’s not so easy. One way is to go up and then slide down cutting all into pieces, but these pieces could possibly hit the mast and I don’t want to lose the mast while actually being up on it. The better solution is to wait for the calm.”

“Cutting the halyard is not a solution, because all is well wrapped there. So now I am focused only on sorting out this problem, and after that I will think what next.”

Gutek said he has not felt in danger and has an exit strategy if it impossible to solve the problem.