Alex Thomson was suitably upbeat about having his boat fail before he got below 40°S (as in, it gave him a chance to fix it whilst it wasn't too rough).
If that had been me I'd have been crapping it on the grounds it had failed before things got rough.
Remember Pete Goss's boat for The Race. It fell apart in a N Atlantic Winter storm on a test sail and they had to abandon it.
That was after one of its bows had fallen off on an earlier shakedown run.
Turned out that the designer hadn't allowed for buckling loads (Euler, something about a dimension ^12 IIRC).
Insignificant in smaller hulls, but as the size increases, buckling failure modes begin to dominate, and because the designer had never worked at this size before he/she simply failed to consider the possibility of buckling.
Given that these craft are permanently pushing the boundaries is so many areas, every single one of those looneys is far far braver then me.