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The Daily Sail reader's opinion on the 60ft trimaran carnage in the Route du Rhum

The trimaran carnage in the Route du Rhum has caused several readers of The Daily Sail to give us their views.

Team Philips designer Adrian Thompson sent us this...

I try to keep my head down bellow the dock wall when boats break due to wave activity, as I got some serious stick when Team Philips was abandoned in the North Atlantic at the centre of a 'bomb'. The truth is that in extreme conditions the loads on a multihull structure are immense, complicated, and it seems, very difficult to predict. Designers and structural engineers have to rely on imperial data to a great extent to structure these boats without the luxury of knowing exactly what the safety margins are at the end of the process.

It does seem odd however, that this years boats have been very accident prone, with mast failures as well as delamination in various vital parts of the structure, but further investigation shows that the performance envelope of these boats has increased at a mighty rate during the last two years, but the race conditions have been relatively benign. Combine the performance increase with some bad weather, and with the reduced capability of a single hander to nurse the boat full time, and you have suddenly entered a very high-risk arena where failures will occur. It¹s not a process without its
critics, but make no mistake, the new boats will be stronger and better as a result.

I guess single handing one of these boats must rate as one of the scariest things to do in a boat or anything else come to that. I can¹t contemplate doing it so I certainly won¹t condemn it.

We agree with Mark Hield's viewpoint

Although there has be a very high drop out due to structural damage and capsizes no lives have been lost or any major injuries. The skippers have shown a high degree of self reliance by relying on rescue from their shore crew or nursing their trimaran back to port after abandoning the race and not relying on too much assistance from outside bodies. This should be applauded and will minimise any possible negative effect of public opinion about sailing trimarans solo.

Whether sponsors will be put off by what has happened is difficult to tell, obviously the greater the damage the greater the expense but allot will depend on the media perception of what has happened. It certainly demonstrates the dangers and the difficulties in sailing trimaran singlehanded along with the technical challenges involved.
Clearly for future races the number of abandonments must be reduced to give a more
creditability to this class as an offshore race boat which in my view are the most exciting offshore race boats sailing and hopefully will still thrive in the future given that some of these difficulties can be sorted out.

TDS: By and large the trimaran skippers have been very self-sufficient which is a good thing and hopefully there should be less opportunity for the rescue authorities and national bodies to take a swipe at the class because of that. If a trimaran skipper chooses to twiddle their thumbs for five days inside the hull of an upturned trimaran as their shore crew comes to the rescue, then that is their choice. We definitely don't want to get to a situation as happened with the Australian rescue authorities when there was an outcry over the highly expensive rescues of Tony Bullimore and Thierry Dubois from the 1996 Vendee Globe and Isabelle Autissier from the BOC Challenge before that.

It will be interesting to see if the Affaires Maritime in France are likely to place any restrictions in the future on how 60ft trimarans are raced - banning singlehanding?


From California Denis Inman writes

I believe that single handed racing is both dangerous, and when the skipper is not on watch, illegal. That doesn't mean that I think it should be stopped altogether, but I believe there should possibly be fewer single handed races and more double handed races.

At least with double handed racing, there is a reasonable assumption that the crew will always maintain an adequate watch. I think about the Volvo 60s screaming around the Southern Ocean with someone on the radar, on visual watch, on the helm, and on the sail controls, but still they have near misses and/or collisions with icebergs and the other racers.

In other parts of the ocean there are semi submerged objects and small boats not operating radar. The oceans are becoming more crowded and we racers are not the only ones out there. There needs to be a little more restraint with single handed distance racing.

TDS: Aha, the old 'singlehanded sailing is illegal'' argument - we meet again! There is a good argument that singlehanded offshore sailing whether it is cruising or racing is illegal under the International Regulations for the Prevention of Collisions At Sea (otherwise known as the COLREGs or 'collision regulations') where it states that an effective look out must be maintained at all times.

The fact is that since this rule was written there is a wealth of electronic aids to help the solo skipper maintaining a remote watch. There are radar guard zones - should any vessel encroach within a certain distance from a boat, then this triggers a huge alarm. All the boats carry 'active' radar reflectors such as Pains Wessex' Ocean Sentry or the French ActivEcho which gives the impression on an enquiring radar set that their boat is frigate-sized. The boats also carry masthead strobes which they use at night.

That said two monohulls were mown down by ships 24 hours into the race. We do not know the exact circumstances surrounding these, but in shipping lanes the onus is distinctly on the sailing yacht to keep clear and the skippers should certainly have kept a better watch. It is these incidents which bring the sport into disrepute.


Donal Byrne writes

The question at the top of your article was "are (high performance) trimarans" seaworthy? They clearly are not in their current design mode, and when sailed singlehanded. Due credit should be given to the sailors (only two) who pulled out of the race because they felt the conditions were unsafe.

The Route de Rhum should only allow this particular class re-enter if there is a person on the helm 24/7, i.e., all the time. Even the leader capsized in only 15 knots when on autopilot 700 miles from the finish! The smaller multihulls and monohulls in the event are handling the conditions much better.

Apart from that, the difficulties of building multihulls on the edge of the design envelope (ref. Pete Goss craft previously) continue.


TDS: As Franck Cammas points out in The Daily Sail's interview with him, there were two types of trimaran capsize in this race.

a) when conditions were moderate and the boats were reasonably powered up. A gust strikes, causing the boat to power up and to dig its leeward bow in and pitchpole. This is what happened to Steve Ravussin, as well as Cammas and Francis Joyon.
b) in the ultimate conditions due to severe wind and wave action - as happened to Yvan Bourgnon and Philippe Monnet.

The main problems with the Route du Rhum trimaran fleet were that a majority of the boats are still relatively new and untested and the boats have been found to be under engineered.


Bristol boat builder Wiz Deas gives us his thoughts

Good old Nigel. I've always been a huge fan of Airex cored boats, for the same reasons - they are tough beyond the level of any honeycomb cored structure.

A voyage in IT82 (one of Nigel's boats) to bring it to Bristol for a repair gave me great experience of that fact. I believe that Rexona and Eure are built this way. It didn't stop them capsizing though and I guess the big winds are the issue there.

On another note, why hasn't anyone mentioned the 50' tri that is right up there doing incredibly well?

Keep up the good work guys.
Cheers
Wiz Deas

TDS: A few years back Nigel had a reputation for designing trimarans with more 'flop' in them that the van Peteghem/Prevost designs. In theory there should be a combination of high stiffness such as longitudinally in the main hull to allow good forestay tension and more flop elsewhere. A tough challenge for the structural engineers!


Andrew Bartholomew offers the following:

Just look at the "carnage" in the AC boats with big professional crews and weather limits! ORMA is the extreme front edge of competitive ocean racing so if they can get sponsors give them the freedom to go for it.

Start the Route du Rhum in April so we can enjoy more boats and skippers longer. And make sure they keep the radar on.

TDS: Having spent some time in NZ recently there are distinct parallels. To break severely in the America's Cup is partly down to the rules (ie if you buy someone else's boat you don't get the plans and engineering parameters with it - hence why keels fall off once changes are made) and due to their being very finely tuned racing machines. The 60ft trimarans are certainly much more refined that they were 10 years ago, much more powerful and efficient sailing machines and the breakage is the price one must pay for such developments.


Trimaran sailor David Bains writes:

Re: the Route de Rhum carnage.I have always thought the concept of starting a singlehanded race from North Britanny in November was frankly foolhardy. There have been plenty of incidents in the preceeding races already to make the organisers think about how to minimise the risks. Now they will have to.

We all understand the late start is to avoid the hurricane season BUT the start date should be made flexible. Medium range forecasting is now good enough to warrant this. Obviously the sponsors and media won't be keen but safety must come first. If the start had been postponed one week then the current race would have been transformed from a destruction derby into a worthwhile event.

On the question of singlehanding, although it has it's appeal in shorter races in less powerful boats, it can't be appropriate to send skippers out into winter gales singlehanded in the most powerful "reactive" boats in the world. I am sure an analysis of tri capsises over the last ten years would demonstrate that they are much more likely when singlehanded. Skippers who have gone to the mast to reef are vulnerable because they can't get back to the cockpit in time.

With two crew at least one person will be near the mainsheet all the time, although even this is not foolproof and you could make a good case for three being the minimum.

Multihulls are fabulous craft but they do not look after themselves, unless sailed undercanvassed which does not happen during races.

What do you think about the trimaran carnage? Email your thoughts to feedback@thedailysail.com