Le Cam and Riou talk about the rescue

Safe, sound and heading for Ushuaia

This morning from on board PRB, Jean le Cam and Vincent Riou hooked up via a video conference call with the Vendee Globe race HQ outside Montparnasse station in Paris to talk about yesterday's rescue.

When Vincent Riou picked up le Cam yesterday, Armel le Cleac'h and BritAir had also arrived on station. With a large sea still running, but the lee of the supertanker certainly helping, there was some deliberation about how to effect a rescue. This was compounded by mechanical problems on both PRB and BritAir. While Riou had long known that his engine would not operate, it was only once he was on station that le Cleac'h also found his engine was not working properly. He is believed to have been down below attempting to fix it when, unannounced Riou attempted the rescue. Riou rescued le Cam under sail power alone.

"First of all, I always had it in my head do not leave the boat, although I didn’t know how long I could live inside," recounted le Cam. "I heard Vincent’s voice in the morning, and thought am I dreaming or not? Then I heard it again so I was sure he was there, and that’s important, because if you get out and there’s no one there, you are really in a bad situation because possibly you can’t get back in - I mean there’s only one shot at this. So I went into the stern of the boat which was submerged and I returned to my igloo in the bow of the boat, but at one point, I thought 'let’s go back, it’s not because of the water that I can’t give it a try'. I had capsized once before and had held on  the outside of the boat for five hours - you need to hold on to something, it’s like when you go buy bread, you can’t forget your money!"

The capsize le Cam refers to is when he and his former skipper Eric Tabarly flipped the 60ft trimaran Bottin Entreprise in the return leg of the Lorient-St Barts-Lorient race in 1989. Then, at least you have an upside down trampoline to wander around on...

Le Cam continues. "So I opened the hatch and things kept coming out of the boat, Vincent saw things come out of the hatch, and then I put my feet first, I got out in one movement with a wave, I held on, lifted my head up, and saw Vincent - it was a great moment.

"So I was in the water and I managed to get on to the boat, with one arm around a rudder. Vincent came around a few times, I grabbed onto his boat and he heaved me up, then the deck spreader hit the keel, and the mast of PRB was inclined over to 30 degrees. So we stabilised the mast, and that was it."

It should be pointed out that Open 60s under IMOCA class rules are obliged to have an escape fitted in their transom. However when VM Materiaux flipped this proved to be underwater. It is believed this was caused by the aft water ballast tanks being full. This is something which IMOCA will need to address in the future.

While his account sounds like he barely got wet, in fact it is believed le Cam was in the water for about 15 minutes. As he was worried about not being able to get back inside the boat, he had taken a rope with him through the escape hatch which he then used to tie himself on to the rudder.

Vincent Riou gives his side: "I heard shouts, I could hear his fear in his voice. I was afraid of how he was dealing with the cold and hypothermia with the boat slowly sinking. I didn’t know how he was inside. I imagined that he could try and get out at some point, so I decided to sail around the boat because I was afraid that he’d try to get out and there would be no one there waiting for him. It’s not easy for someone to get out like that, so we stayed close to the boat the whole  time we waited. Then on one turn I saw things coming out, I thought 'he’s doing something' - I saw containers, then the hatch opened, and I knew immediately the boat was open and so I stayed close so as soon as Jean would come out I’d be there."

PRB circled VM Materiaux: "I came close the first time, then I came close again a second time and I missed him, and on the fourth attempt I managed to get him a line. But the closer I got the more risky it became - it would only take one wave for Jean to be thrown off - you can’t resist the pressure of the water. So the fourth time I got really close, the hulls didn’t touch but the deck spreader hit the [upturned] keel. At the time I really didn’t care - the first job was to get Jean then I’d take care of the deck spreader. My priority was set on getting Jean no matter what."

This might all seem relatively straightforward expect that there was a large sea running. The Captain of the supertanker for example said he was unable to see the rescue since the sea was so big and the boats were disappearing behind waves.

At present the duo are heading toward Cape Horn and hope to moor up somewhere around the Beagle Channel tonight. The damage to the end of PRB's deck spreader is significant and it will be interesting to see whether in the circumstances Riou is allowed outside assistance to fix this as the damage was caused during a rescue. We think it should be... "I’m waiting from the jury to see how the race can go on for me, or how it can end, I’m in discussions with the jury to see what the possibilities are," he says.

The plan is to disembark le Cam in Ushuaia tonight where they will be met by Isabelle Autissier who’s there with her boat. Autissier herself is no stranger to the circumstances le Cam has been through having been retrieved from the upturned hull of her boat, ironically another PRB, during the 1997-8 Around Alone, by the valiant Italian Giovanni Soldini.

As to why the bulb may have come off his boat, le Cam reckons it was a collision: "I was on the phone with Vincent, we were talking, and I felt something, a shock on the boat, something weird, and I felt something was really wrong, and the boat laid over and then capsized. I think I must have hit a container or something in the water. My first reflex was to look behind - there was nothing, but it must have been a container. Here we see lots of maritime traffic, and usually that means that some things are left behind.

"So the boat lay flat - it capsized quite quickly, since there was no bulb left, then the first thing I did was to jump on my clothes and my TPS [survival suit] and organised the rest to resist the cold, I grabbed my blanket which was wet and dried it off."