Holy heart failure

World's biggest racing yacht goes deck cargo...see the pics and report from Mari Cha IV skipper Jef d'Etiveaud

Mari-Cha IV was successfully loaded on the container ship Cielo del Canada - great work by the crew, and the boys at Complete Freight. The shipping of the boat is a bit of a record in itself. I think Mari Cha IV is the largest sailboat to travel on the deck of a container ship.

You will see on the pictures that we loaded the whole package Boats and Rigs in one shot. This made for an easier one step loading but also increased the weight of the load to the maximum capacity of the cranes… All alarms went off during the loading as alarms are usually set below the max capacity...

Still all went well and the boat is already mid-way to Panama. I thank everyone who worked on the loading with a special mention to the Long Beach longshoremen who accepted to load this fragile object. It is one thing to handle steel containers and of course a much more difficult task to lift a 140ft carbon fibre boat.

The ship is schedule to be in the Med around 6 September where we will re-step the rigs and do the Voiles de St Tropez preparation.

More pics on page 2...