Brian Thompson's PlayStation diary - 15/1/01

The British PlayStation watch captain reports after their retirement

Here we are sailing at 20 knots, the sun is rising - but on the wrong side of the boat. We are heading north, the game is over, our long held dreams of a circumnavigation by maxi cat dashed.

Everyone is very disappointed with this northerly course but we all believe it's the correct decision by the skipper Steve Fossett to withdraw from The Race. The odds of even finishing the event were getting slimmer, the odds of racing as we want to have evaporated.

Yesterday at 1300 we were close reaching in 20 knots of breeze, one reef and the solent up, when we noticed the first reef clew patch starting to pull away from the rest of the main. We went straight to the second reef and Nick Moloney dove straight into making up a repair. He worked nine hours continuously on the back of the boom to complete the job and we rehoisted. The repair held well but the problem with the sail remained, the stitching was failing, just rotting away, and we saw evidence of a future repeat failure at the second reef patch.

This main is over two years old, has seen some hard use, numerous recuts, a lot of hours in the sun and even more hours wet under the sailcover at the dock.

We carried on sailing south until 2300 when I was awoken by the boat stopping and lots of commotion on deck, the port dagger board had broken off and was floating alongside the boat, hanging on by threads of carbon. The guys managed to lasso the foil and twist it around, breaking its links to the vessel, and 20 minutes after the incident began, the bright orange board was drifting astern in the two metre seas.

We hoisted the remains into the hull and headed off again south, the good starboard board giving us lift on port tack. We must have hit something, talking with those on board who have hit whales and broken boards before, apparently the break is so clean you don't feel any impact - it's only when the board does not break that you come to a sudden stop.
Steve got together with the navigator Stan Honey and the watch captains Gino Morelli, Ben Wright and myself, and discussed our options. We could go on into the Southern Ocean with a main that clearly was going to fail again under sailing loads and with the accidental abuse that is inevitable in those latitudes. It would then have to be repaired multiple times by hand, on deck, in bad conditions - and we were down a dagger board, which would degrade our performance to some extent, but would become a safety concern if we broke the other one and were able only to go downwind. We might end up stranded in some port in the antipodes, and miss the summer in the North Atlantic waiting on parts, sails, etc..

The other option was to turn around, preserve the equipment for a summer season of transatlantic records and a Jules Verne attempt next winter. And although we have all been completely committed to our trip around the planet, it is hard to refute the logic, we were only 15% of the way around and not capable of continuing to race hard. And the Southern Ocean is not a place you want to go to for a pleasure cruise. We then had a meeting with the whole crew and we all backed the skipper's decision to head for Florida, regroup, and continue PlayStation's programme.

Of course, the irony is that we were making big gains on the leaders, who were becoming ensnared ahead in the South Atlantic High, and we were going to come through as the high cleared to the east!

To sum up our race, we have a fantastic machine in PlayStation, and when we lined up against the other boats in flat water we had equal pace on the competition. If our new sails had not broken we would have been up with Team Adventure out of the Med and no doubt vying for the lead down the Atlantic. And in the south we have a safer boat, longer, with far greater beam clearance over the seas than the others. Our crew is great and have sailed together for a lot of hard ocean miles. We have a good package, and it could have been an amazingly exciting race for us all.

When we pulled into Gib to load our old sails we knew we were taking a punt that they would last the distance, and unfortunately our concerns with them were proved correct at only ten degrees south.

So good sailing to everyone, and particularly to the crews of the five boats continuing around the planet, sail fast, sail safe, and we will be watching out for you.

This is PlayStation, out ......