Kaboom...then a shower of carbon

Orange crewman Nick Moloney recounts his experience of yesterday's mast breakage

Last night coming down here we were all a bit down in the dumps. It was blowing 30 knots and we could look up at the sky and see it was clear. We all knew that at that point we should have been closing on Finisterre at a rate of knots in these perfect conditions - instead of limping south to the Golfe du Morbihan.

How or why the break happened we have yet to work out. One theory is that it may have been due to the fitting for the top mast backstay breaking. This is made up of two cones attached by a strop that goes through the mast. This is a clever system where you crank up the backstay and it pulls the leeward cone into the rig. There's nothing new about this and last year it made it round the world on three boats including Orange [then called Innovations Explorer], in The Race.

It is possible that the coupling just blew off, but before it happened there was no panting, no sign that anything was wrong. We'll have to wait to hear what the technical experts at Multiplast come up with to know what happened, if it can be fixed and if so, how long it will take.

My feelings are particularly for Bruno [Peyron] at the moment. He just has so much on his plate to deal with, what with the sponsors, dealing with the boatyard, the designers, engineers and us. It is a huge set back and this trip meant so much to him. All my concerns lie with him, yet he's been cool about it. He hasn't shown any signs of stress which everyone else has. He hasn't kicked the floor like all the rest of us have.

At the moment our focus is to get going again. There is a mad rush on to get the rig out and to assess the damage. Everyone is helping, but there is a lot to fix. The top of the mast is a bit of a mess, not just from the breakage, but during the night as we sailed down here under staysail alone a lot of the halyards tore down through the walls of the rig.

If a repair doesn't, then I might book a ticket to Maui to get some surfing in...