Stamm safe

Swiss skipper recovered from upturned Open 60 in The Transat

Over the last 24 hours the might of the North Atlantic has been felt by two Open 60 skippers taking part in The Transat.

Today has seen the Maritime Rescue Co-ordination Centre (MRCC) in Halifax, Nova Scotia co-ordinating the rescue of Swiss skipper Bernard Stamm from the upturned hull of his Open 60 Cheminées Poujoulat/Armor Lux.

At 0645 this morning a signal was heard from Stamm’s EPIRB. Contact was established with Stamm who revealed that his Open 60 had turned on her side following her keel breaking. At the time she was at 49deg 55.96' N 44deg 05.68' W some 411 miles from Cape Race, the southeasternmost tip of Newfoundland.

Three hours earlier while sailing in 45 knot winds Stamm had expressed serious concern about his keel which was “shaking terribly”. “For me the race is finished, I have to slow down and I head towards the nearest land," he said.

Following Stamm's EPIRB transmission the MRCC in Halifax scrambled a Canadian Air Force Hercules from Greenwood, Nova Scotia to locate his upturned Open 60 visually. The MRCC also diverted the oil and chemical tanker, Emma, to the scene as well as the 74m Jean Charcot, a Scottish-owned survey vessel currently carrying out fisheries inspection duties in the area on behalf of the EU. A US Coastguard vessel had also been dispatched to the scene from St Johns, Newfoundland. Sebastien Josse’s Open 60 VMI, the only Open 60 in The Transat on Stamm’s northerly latitude, was initially asked to divert but was later relieved of this duty by the MRCC.

At 1230GMT the Hercules crew spotted the upturned hull of Cheminées Poujoulat/Armor Lux and established communication with Stamm over the 243MHz aircraft distress frequency.

First vessel on to the scene was the Emma who launched their lifeboat and recovered the Swiss skipper at 1545GMT. Fortunately the wind in the area had abated to 20-25 knot from the NNW, although a 3-4m sea remained. Stamm was subsequently transferred to the Jean Charcot bound for St Johns, Newfoundland where he is expected to arrive on Wednesday.

Once safe on the Jean Charcot Stamm explained what had happened after he had first experienced the keel vibration: "I tried to reduce the speed of the ship because the average was 20 knots of speed, but the movement of the keel was the same. Then the ship took a big surf at 26-27 knots and the keel started to move very quickly as if the bulb was a fish, and maybe 10 seconds after that the keel broke and the ship fell on its side."

"Then I phoned up Mark Turner to say I was in trouble and then after that the ship capsized." Stamm says the companionway hatch had been open at the time, and the boat was rapidly filling with water. He then put on his survival suit and put all the safety gear, liferaft, grab bag, food, etc near the emergency hatch in the transom.

The keel foil had broken just outside the exit of the hull. Prior to last year's Transat Jacques Vabre the boat was fitted with a new carbon fibre keel foil, that removed 400kg from the keel. Stamm believes his keel is suffering from the same problems as those experienced on the new Lombard designs Sill and Bonduelle. "It cannot work at high speed. Since we put the new keel on we have never done these speeds before."

The capsize of Cheminées Poujoulat/Armor Lux is the first occasion since the late 1990s that this fate has befallen an Open 60. During the 1996-7 Vendee Globe singlehanded non-stop around the world race three boats inverted in storm force conditions in the Southern Ocean.

It should be noted that in the case of Cheminées Poujoulat/Armor Lux the foil breakage was due to a terminal cavitation problem that many believe is a function of attempting to reduce the cord of carbon fibre foils too much. In contrast the Vendee Globe incidents occurred because of a lack of stability of the Open 60s at a time prior to IMOCA, the Open 60 class association, introducing strict rules for their boats to prevent them inverting and remaining inverted.

Riou too

Earlier this morning at 0430 GMT The Transat organisers were advised that Vincent Riou’s Open 60 PRB had been dismasted. This follows Friday evening’s dismasting of Jean-Pierre Dick’s open 60 Virbac.

At the time PRB had been sailing on starboard tack in 25 knot northwesterly winds around 60 miles to the southeast of Stamm’s location. Open 60s have twin rudders and for reasons of safety PRB’s have a kick-up system that maintains the integrity of the rudders in the event of a collision.

Riou says that he was below when he felt the rudder collide with a submerge object. The rudder kicked up as it was designed to but with no steerage, the boat bore away, gybed and was laid flat. This occurred so violently that the mast was broken. As he attempted to cut away the rig the boom was violently hammering on the deck and Riou was obliged to let this go over the side too. He is thus left with no spars with which to erect a jury rig.

Riou is now discussing with his shore team the best course of action to get the boat to land. This may involved sending a boat from the St Pierre et Miquelon islands to recover skipper and vessel. It was later announced that Olivier de Kersauson's 27m motor trimaran Ocean Alchimist would be going to her rescue, departing Brest tomorrow and arriving in four days time.

On the race course

Meanwhile back in the race the match race has resumed between Mike Golding’s Ecover and Mike Sanderson’s Pindar AlphaGraphics. At the 1500GMT position report Golding was due east of the Grand Banks, 343 miles from Cape Race with Sanderson just 3.4 miles behind in terms of distance to finish.

In the ORMA 60s the lead of Michel Desjoyeaux’s Geant has been halved over the last 24 hours. The Vendee Globe winner now leads Thomas Coville’s Sodebo by 49.8 miles.

In the 50ft multihulls American sitesalive.com record breaker Rich Wilson continues to move up the fleet and has overtaken the French cruising catamaran Gifi to take second place in his class, 115 miles astern of Eric Bruneel on Trilogic. Among the 50ft monohulls Joe Harris’ northerly route has paid dividends and he is now just 13.7 mile behind first placed fellow Bostonian Kip Stone on ArtForms.