Severe damage sustained

By Team Gartmore during the early hours of this morning in the EDS Atlantic Challenge

The highly unusual phenomenon of sad, depressed faces was on board Gartmore this morning when reporting on last night's devastating collision with a submerged object...

At around 0400GMT last night we struck something in the water and it completely broke off our port rudder. Being on starboard gybe, the port rudder was the one in use and the hole in the bottom of the boat that was left immediately allowed a huge amount of water into the lazerette. We immediately gybed and went close hauled to lift the hole clear of the water. Plugging the 150mm diameter hole, which was actually the rudder bearing with no rudder shaft in it, was the primary concern. First I stripped off my Musto jacket and shoved it in , and shortly after Javier had the great idea off inflating a lifejacket in the hole. This bought us the time to pump and bail the water out. Then we could sort a more water-tight solution. We found a carbon inspection disc in the engine bay that luckily fitted the inside of the flanged bearing exactly. This is now sikaflexed into the bearing with half of our boat hook wedged between it and the deckhead to keep it in place.

Whatever we hit was very solid because it has also damaged the structure around the lower bearing and that is letting a fair amount of water in too...the bilge pump is running every 30 minutes to keep on top of the intake. We are trying various solutions to seal this leak , no success yet.

When we struck we were flying along at 14-17kts boatspeed with full mainsail and big code 5 running genaker set. The leaders had slowed to very low speeds and we harboured hopes of at least halving their lead. Now we can only sail very conservatively on starboard gybe as we have to keep the windward rudder in the water. Whenever we can sail on port gybe or tack we should be able to sail normally, but we are way under-canvassed right now as the wind is in the south west still.

We are all quite simply gutted by this blow, but we have already decided to make it to St. Malo and the finish line.