UPDATED REPORT at 1500: Cape Horn capsize

Disaster for Jean le Cam - the wrong side of Cape Horn. The low-down from race HQ

Jean Le Cam skipper of VM Matériaux telephoned his shore team in France this morning to inform them that he was experiencing serious difficulties on board his Open 60 monohull. It was possible that he was capsizing, as before he had time to expand on this the phone went dead. At the time VM Materiaux was located at 56°S 17’ and 73°W 46’ or around 200 miles west of Cape Horn. At the time, the wind was were 25 knot westerly to southwesterly with stronger gusts.

Immediately the Maritime Rescue Coordination Centre was alerted and Vincent Riou ( PRB) and Armel Le Cléac’h ( Brit Air) were instructed to change course to go to VM Materiaux's position: They should reach this by around 1300 GMT today.

An EPIRB on VM Materiaux's was triggered at 0140 GMT. The rescue services are preparing to intervene and the plan of action will be updated as information is received by the Race Directors.

Subsequently the MRCC have diverted a ship and scrambled a plane to the area. The ship was 65 miles from the position of VM Matériaux and is expected to reach the area at around 1030 GMT. A Chilean spotter plane is being prepared to head for the zone at daybreak.

Chile is three hours behind GMT and thankfully mid-summer the night is short. In Punta Arenas, the sun goes down at 0100 GMT and comes up at 0830 GMT. It was therefore dark when VM Materiaux's distress beacon was triggered.

10:20 GMT update

The MRCC Chile has informed the Race Director a Chilean Navy spotter plane flew over VM Materiaux at 0945 GMT and confirms that she has indeed capsized. .A second EPIRB was activated manually on boats at 08.50GMT. The tanker, Sonangol Kassanje, has now arrived in the area.

15:00 GMT update

Julian Hocken, who works with Denis Horeau on the race management side of the Vendee Globe has just updated us with the situation regarding Jean le Cam's capsize.

At present the 273m long tanker Sonangol Kassanje is alongside the upturned hull of VM Materiaux, but her crew are unable to launch a rescue boat.

“We have been speaking to the skipper of the tanker pretty regularly," recounts Hocken. "It is about 185,000 tonnes and 300m long, but it is rolling a lot. They have a swell of about a minimum of 4m, 25 knots of wind and it is just too dangerous for them to launch a boat and it would be even more difficult to recover a rescue boat. So for the safety of his own crew, and on the instructions of the MRCC in Chile, they are sat and waiting it out.”

Worringly at present there has been no communication with skipper Jean le Cam. This comes as no huge surprise since none of his regular lines of communication would work with the boat now upside down.

“There has still been no contact established with Jean, since he spoke to his shore crew at 0020 GMT,” says Hocken. “The only contact that there has been was with the two EPIRB which were set off eight hours apart.”

It is assumed - although again it is not 100% certain - that the keel has come off VM Materiaux and it was this that caused her to flip. As Hocken explains “It is difficult to be 100% about that. I spoke to the captain of the tanker who is right alongside and we were asking him to describe what he saw and he didn’t describe anything that sounded like a very tall keel fin with a torpedo-shaped bulb on it. He said there were fin like things sticking up off it, which could potentially be rudders or daggerboards, but from what he described it didn’t sound like there was a keel on.”

What is uncertain is whether or not the EPIRBs were set off manually or automatically (they can be set off manually while some fire up when they encounter water or when they are turned upside down). While le Cam spoke with his shore crew just after midnight, the first EPIRB was not set off until 1:36GMT. Given that the communication with his score crew ended abruptly indicates that the boat may have flipped at that moment, in which case the first EPIRB not firing up until more than an hour later indicates that it is more likely to have been set off manually.

“Having talked to the manufacturers and having talked to Jean’s shore crew and having looked at the exact specifications of the beacons that he’s got, the general consensus is that it is more likely that certainly the second one was set off manually. So we are taking that as a positive sign, but it is by no means 100%,” continues Hocken. “The fact that the second beacon was set off eight hours later when the state of the boat shouldn’t have changed particularly gives us a little bit more hope that it was by human intervention.”

Both EPIRBs were located inside VM Materiaux’ cabin, on opposite sides.

Open 60s in the Vendee Globe are obliged to carry two EPIRBs for just this purpose. However they also carry three CLS (formerly known as ARGOS) beacons. This is the only beacon that would have been outside of the boat, located on the stern rail at the back of the cockpit. For this very type of incident one of the ARGOS beacons is set up so that in the event of the boat turning upside down and staying that way, an antenna can be shoved outside via a through-hull fitting. However le Cam hasn’t resorted to this says Hocken: “The beacon itself is located less than 2m from the through-hull fitting which the antenna is designed to go through. We have been checking in with CLS Toulouse regularly and there has been no activation of his ARGOS keel-up beacon.”

ARGOS beacons have the facility to indicate to a race organiser if a) the skipper is alive and b) if they require assistance. This has been used to communicate this information on many occasions in past races. However that these haven’t been fired up on this occasion may be no surprise. While the ARGOS beacon on the transom would now be inaccessible and underwater, the other two would be still in their boxes, somewhere in the depths of le Cam’s spares as typically they would only be dug out towards the end of the race when the primary unit was running low on battery power.

Hocken shares what they are thinking: “Given the boat was probably in a state of turmoil after a capsize at night, we wouldn’t necessarily expect him to be able to lay his hands on the beacons immediately. Also we’re not entirely certain what kind of a signal he would be able to get out from inside the boat - we think it is possible that an EPIRB can transmit from inside the boat, although perhaps with a slightly signal and a bigger delay before the satellites pick up and potentially with some loss of accuracy.

"Also as far as the CLS beacons go, what we have drummed into the skippers at all the safety briefings is that the CLS beacons are tracking beacons, they are not distress beacons. In a distress situation their first thought should be to set off an EPIRB and, if possible, two EPIRBs. We have said, if you can set off two separate signals we will take that as an instant MayDay. He has set of two different beacons, albeit some time apart and the fact that they are EPIRBs gives us some hope. But nothing is 100% sure.”

It still seems odd that le Cam hasn’t tried to communicate. Even if he couldn’t stick the ARGOS antenna through the skin fitting then he might have tried with the antenna from a handheld Iridium phone?

“Given that the boat could be in a right old state, we don’t know if it would even be possible for him,” says Hocken. “The tanker has been trying to hail him with no response. Having spoken to Vincent Riou, his buddy – his feeling is that Jean would stay inside the boat absolutely until he was 100% certain there was someone right there outside to pick him up. So what they are thinking about at the moment is how they can make the most possible noise on the hull, just to get him to stick his head out.”

Riou is expected at VM Materiaux’s position without the hour with Armel le Cleac’h and BritAir in hot pursuit, another 6-7 miles behind. It is hoped that the Sonangol Kassanje will hang around to provide a much-needed lee for any transfer to take place.

“The tanker skipper was saying, is there much point in my hanging around? Surely no one can survive in that? But we gave him the whole Bullimore story and he said ‘okay – in that case I’ll stay!’” says Hocken.

Given that le Cam was on the phone presumably when the capsize happened it is likely he was down below at the time. According to Hocken, Vincent Riou had been on the phone to him just minutes before. “Vincent had been speaking to Jean and Jean had said ‘hold on, something’s not right. I’ll get back to you’. And it must have been then that Jean rang his shore crew. When I rang Vincent he said he wasn’t surprised that we were ringing because he’d tried to call Jean back and he hadn’t been able to get through.”

Exactly how the rescue of le Cam will happen remains to be seen. Following various Open 60s capsizing and remaining that way during the 1990s, so they are well equipped today to deal with this scenario. Just for this purpose they have a hatch in their transom which a skipper must be able to access from down below and they must also have a liferaft accessible in the transom. During their measurement process, IMOCA 60s must go through a full inversion test with their skipper down below, so it will not have been the first time le Cam would have experience his boat upside down.

In theory PRB and/or BritAir pitch up, sound their foghorn, le Cam slips out through the hatch in the transom, catches a line from one of the boats, leaps into his liferaft and all is well. If he doesn’t respond then the skippers will have the tricky decision of how on earth one of them will get on board to find out what’s happened to him. Into this mix PRB has engine problems, while Hocken says le Cleac’h has already whipped the seal off BritAir’s prop shaft to ensure it is ready for action.

“It will be a case of getting on the scene and seeing how best they can do it. The first thing will be to make as much noise as possible that Jean would know someone is immediately outside the boat.”

One would have thought a supertanker might be able to make a reasonable amount of noise? Hocken says that the captain on the Sonangol Kassanje has been blowing their horn at regular intervals to show they are there.

“Our worry is that Jean could be injured inside the boat and be unable to move much. We are working on the assumption that someone may have to get on board that boat at some stage.”

Fingers crossed everyone.