Leopard - the full story

James Boyd speaks to skipper Chris Sherlock about the recent rudder loss on Mike Slade's maxi

Leopard during a prouder moment at Skandia Life Cowes Week last year

At present Mike Slade's 18 month old maxi Leopard of London is slowly limping back towards La Coruna in northwest Spain under tow having lost her rudder one and a half weeks ago while on a routine delivery trip back from Antigua to the UK. All being well, she is due to arrive in La Coruna on Friday.

Leopard's skipper Chris Sherlock, who has been with owner Mike Slade for 10 years and has also run Ocean Leopard and Longabarda on behalf of the Helical Bar property developer, is currently pulling his hair out as he undertakes the huge logistical task of arranging for Leopard to be shipped back to the UK, for her cradle (which is in the UK) to be shipped to La Coruna, while at the same time dealing with Leopard's insurers and her salvors.

Sherlock took time out from his hair pulling to tell madfor sailing what happened.

At the time of the incident on Tuesday 2 April, Leopard had left the Azores and was bound for Southampton. Sherlock estimates that they were 1.5 days away from Land's End. The weather was lively with the wind between 35 and 40 knots and the swell running at 6-8m. "We were surfing between 12 and 20 knots. We were comfortable. Everything was under control" said Sherlock. At the time they were under storm jib and storm trisail running fairly deep, surfing at between 12 and 20 knots.

When the rudder broke the boat rounded up violently into the wind. "At that point I knew there was a catastrophic failure," commented Sherlock. "I inspected the lazaret and the rudder was flailing around. It had broken between the quadrant and the top bearing. I looked over the side and you could see the rudder just dangling there. We knew we had big problems".

They dropped the sails while Sherlock considered their options. "The lazaret had filled up with water and with the amount of water coming in and considering where we were - it was 500 miles to the closest land at that time - I put out a Mayday to make sure someone was in the area in the event we lost the boat."

Two ships arrived on the scene. However by this time, they had shut the main watertight bulkhead which Sherwood says is 15-20ft from the stern. He had switched the bilge pumps on and had cleared the water that had got into the main part of the accommodation, although he says some was still coming in through the holes in the bulkhead for cables and piping. By the time the ships arrived he felt he had stabilised the situation and they were in better shape to save the boat. As a result the Maritime Rescue Co-ordination Centre handling the Mayday released the ships.

However further problems arose with the boat being so stern down. "The generator started overheating due to back pressure up the exhaust," explained Sherlock ( Leopard's exhaust is piped out through the transom). "We found we could only run it for short periods." They had to run the generator to keep the batteries alive not only to run the bilge pumps, but also to keep their comms alive. Finally the generator packed up and they were forced to bail by hands. "We bailed from lunchtime that day until the next day when we were taken off," he recalls.

At lunchtime the day after the breakage and following discussions with the MRCC Sherlock made the call to abandon ship. "I was pretty keen to stay on the boat with the core full time crew," he said. "We advised the MRCC and our shoreside operation that we were prepared to stay. But due to the weather forecast we were advised it would be hard to get a ship to us in the foreseeable future." The forecast showed that a Force 10 storm was due 48 hours later, but that there would be a lull in the conditions that would give them an opportunity to get off if that is what they wanted to do.

More help arrives on page 2, but it's no plain sailing quite yet...