Team Philips' bow located

Survey vessel spots blue hull off Irish coast

A large piece of wreckage, identified as part of Pete Goss' catamaran Team Philips was located yesterday off the Irish coast. The section of bow was spotted by Norwegian seismic survey vessel MV Geo-Pacific, which has been operating in the Malin Head area, and reported to Malin Head Coastguard by her navigating officer, madforsailing was told at midnight last night by Captain Chris Bingham.
The wreckage was spotted by the Geo-Pacific and a support vessel, the Tors Chaser was despatched at around 1800 to investigate. The wreckage was a section of bow measuring some six to seven metres. Trone Rabben, first mate on board the Geo-Pacific told madforsailing that the bow had the logo "Let's make things better" and some of the crew had recognised it as coming from the Goss cat and had gone on the internet to confirm it. "We have cables out so it wa not possible to pick up, " said Rabben.

The position of the wreckage was reported as being at 54deg 33min N 10deg 36mins W - 50-60 miles west of Donegal Bay.

Team Philips was abandoned by Pete Goss and her crew on 10 December, and was last reported to be 650 miles west of Ireland on 19 December. An airborn reconnaissance trip by Goss on 21 December failed to turn up anything. At the time Pete Goss said "finding Team Philips will be difficult - it will be rather like searching for a needle in a haystack." At the time her central accommodation pod was breaking, but her fate - whether she capsized and broke up or not - until now has been a mystery.