Author Topic: Vendee Globe 2020 (Read 6539 times)

Mr Larrington · « **Reply #25 on:** 01 December, 2020, 09:55:26 am »

Translation: the front fell off

DuncanM · « **Reply #26 on:** 01 December, 2020, 11:30:58 am »

Holy moly. That story is something, and then at the end, there's this little snippet:

Quote

This amazing rescue reverses roles played out between 5th and 6th January 2009, during the 2008-2009 Vendée Globe. Vincent Riou, the then the skipper of PRB, rescued Jean Le Cam from his upturned IMOCA 60 which had capsized 200 miles west of Cape Horn. Le Cam was trapped inside his upturned VM Materiaux for 16 hours during which time it was not known for certain if Le Cam was safe inside his boat or not.

Edit - I've just looked at the boat. That's more F1 than F1! The forces of a 60ft hydrofoil hitting a wave at 30 knots must be epic.
(pictures here: https://www.sail-world.com/news/233537/Kevin-Escoffier-(PRB)-activates-Distress-Beacon )

hatler · « **Reply #27 on:** 01 December, 2020, 11:47:47 am »

It doesn't always work out so well - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gerry_Roufs

benborp · « **Reply #28 on:** 01 December, 2020, 12:22:26 pm »

Quote from: DuncanM on 01 December, 2020, 11:30:58 am

Edit - I've just looked at the boat. That's more F1 than F1! The forces of a 60ft hydrofoil hitting a wave at 30 knots must be epic.
(pictures here: https://www.sail-world.com/news/233537/Kevin-Escoffier-(PRB)-activates-Distress-Beacon )

I would say they are more like Le Mans prototypes. F1 has a far more sophisticated development and manufacturing programme and is more sanitised than it was in terms of the race mechanics working on the bleeding edge.
Tour the garages at Le Mans and it will still be pretty routine for someone to take a hacksaw to three hundred grands worth of bodywork realise it was a mistake and then race it with a gaffa tape repair.

I read recently how formidably difficult it was to do a structural analysis of these boats - the ocean environment never being constant, the boat never having consistent points of support which can be considered when applying calculations of the forces generated across the rigging points and foils - it was mind bending even in comparison to something mad like an F1 clutch or the Bloodhound drive train.

drgannet · « **Reply #29 on:** 01 December, 2020, 01:22:09 pm »

Escoffier comes across remarkably calm after the event. Being in a life raft in any kind of sea is a grim experience, let alone a 5m swell 1000 miles from land in the dark.

There are some nice (mainly promotional) videos on youtube of the newest boats in testing over the last year. Most boats in this race competed in the Vendee Arctique in July, but the Southern Ocean is reportedly a different place alltogether. Interesting that Thompson's boat suffered a similar partial failure in the North Atlantic storm on the way down and may well not have survived so well later on had he continued.

I can highly recommend Pete Goss's book 'Close to the wind' for the description of his rescue of Raphael Dinelli in the 1996 version.

hatler · « **Reply #30 on:** 01 December, 2020, 01:27:54 pm »

Quote from: drgannet on 01 December, 2020, 01:22:09 pm

Escoffier comes across remarkably calm after the event. Being in a life raft in any kind of sea is a grim experience, let alone a 5m swell 1000 miles from land in the dark.

There are some nice (mainly promotional) videos on youtube of the newest boats in testing over the last year. Most boats in this race competed in the Vendee Arctique in July, but the Southern Ocean is reportedly a different place alltogether. Interesting that Thompson's boat suffered a similar partial failure in the North Atlantic storm on the way down and may well not have survived so well later on had he continued.

I can highly recommend Pete Goss's book 'Close to the wind' for the description of his rescue of Raphael Dinelli in the 1996 version.

That's a great read. Very inspiring.

hatler · « **Reply #31 on:** 01 December, 2020, 01:37:40 pm »

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.

andyoxon · « **Reply #32 on:** 01 December, 2020, 09:21:06 pm »

The kind of thing which happened to Escoffier's boat can't be conducive for the skippers having a bit of shuteye in the middle of the southern ocean night...

hatler · « **Reply #33 on:** 01 December, 2020, 09:25:59 pm »

Anyone who's in a boat of a similar age from the same designer would possibly be considering throttling back a bit I would think.

hatler · « **Reply #34 on:** 03 December, 2020, 01:34:15 pm »

Sam Davies looks to have turned left for Cape Town, and is going relatively slowly. Can't find anything about her with a cursory Google search though.

PaulF · « **Reply #35 on:** 03 December, 2020, 01:42:11 pm »

Think she hit something in the water but I can’t find a link.

hatler · « **Reply #36 on:** 03 December, 2020, 02:17:39 pm »

Bugger.

Premières nouvelles de Sam après son avarie. Elle revient sur le choc violent que son bateau a subi la nuit dernière. Sam va bien, elle inspecte son bateau pour évaluer les dégâts.

From https://live.initiatives-coeur.fr/vendee-globe/2020/interventions/1773

drgannet · « **Reply #37 on:** 03 December, 2020, 07:39:50 pm »

Sebastian Simon also hit something last night and his boat Arkea has suffered significant foil damage. Sadly sounds like both will end up retiring (TBD but what is reported so far does not sound promising).

hatler · « **Reply #38 on:** 03 December, 2020, 08:19:23 pm »

Certainly looks like he's heading for CT too.

hatler · « **Reply #39 on:** 03 December, 2020, 08:23:12 pm »

I wonder if what they're hitting is whales.

No engine noise, 25 kts, nasty sharp sticky out bits, whale numbers going up globally, I can easily see how a whale on the surface could easily be caught napping. They will not have encountered this kind of threat before.

Also, based on Alex Thomson's vids he spends virtually no time on deck looking where he's going and the computer does all the steering, so it is like a very long odds version of Russian roulette (for the boat and the whale).

Mr Larrington · « **Reply #40 on:** 03 December, 2020, 08:54:49 pm »

Or containers?

hatler · « **Reply #41 on:** 03 December, 2020, 09:01:10 pm »

Quote from: Mr Larrington on 03 December, 2020, 08:54:49 pm

Or containers?

That's the other obvious possibility, though I would think that if you hit one of those you'd end up with a hole in the hull.

hatler · « **Reply #42 on:** 23 January, 2021, 02:57:17 pm »

This is building to quite a climax. 1500nm to go and the first four boats have less than 100nm between them.

hatler · « **Reply #43 on:** 24 January, 2021, 11:17:59 pm »

And the boat currently running third, 57.4 nm behind the leader, has a six hour bonus waiting for him when he crosses the line due to the time he spent helping in the rescue of Escoffier SW of the Cape of Good Hope.

At 15kn that puts him in the lead.

T42 · « **Reply #44 on:** 25 January, 2021, 10:02:57 am »

The mayor of Les Sables d'Olonne is hopping mad that the prefect won't allow spectators at the finish.

hatler · « **Reply #45 on:** 25 January, 2021, 11:14:45 am »

Ooo, I can imagine he'd be a little upset at that.

fimm · « **Reply #46 on:** 25 January, 2021, 01:37:03 pm »

Clearly, "nm" in this context are Nautical Miles. However my brain initially offered me "nanometers"... that would be a close race!

drgannet · « **Reply #47 on:** 25 January, 2021, 07:28:49 pm »

Well, who do you reckon has it?

Very hard to know what the wind will do, but I will boldy predict the first non-French win and go for Boris Herrmann.

hatler · « **Reply #48 on:** 25 January, 2021, 09:01:25 pm »

Hmmm. There's no big change in weather due in the next couple of days, and Herrman is about six hours behind the leader on the water (which with his time bonus would put them about level).

Too close for me to call now. If I were to put a bet on I'd go for Apivia/Dalin (current leader) to just hold on.

drgannet · « **Reply #49 on:** 27 January, 2021, 02:18:14 pm »

Looks like it is going to be Dalin by a whisker. Exciting stuff.