A “big crack”: this is how Louis Burton summed up the incident this Sunday morning to his technical team. A noise you don't like to hear on a racing boat. Le Malouin quickly noticed that there were cracks on the deck of the boat, near the gennaker spreader.
This crack appeared at the spreader, “a sort of small pole at the rear which allows you to act as if you had a wider boat for the points of tension of the front sails”, explains Michel Desjoyeaux.
In the short press release sent by his team, we can read that these cracks could “risk affecting the structural integrity of the boat”. Worrying. For now, Louis Burton remains on the run: he inspects the area and assesses the extent of the damage.
Escoffier in 2020, Ruyant in 2016
Obviously, this “big crack” brings to mind Kevin Escoffier’s shipwreck four years ago: he saw his Imoca PRB break in two in the southwest of the Cape of Good Hope: “I’m sinking. It's not a joke! », This was the message sent by Escoffier to his team.
His 60-foot monohull had just broken in two after surfing and crashing at the bottom of the wave. We remember the rescue operations with diverted competitors to help him before this happy ending and this recovery, in the night, by Jean Le Cam. “When I heard that big crack, I never would have imagined that my boat had broken in two,” Escoffier said after spending agonizing hours in his life raft. A few years earlier, this same boat, then in the hands of Vincent Riou, had to abandon the 2014 Route du Rhum: the mainsheet bulkhead was torn off along its entire length at hull level. .
Two tons of compression
Of course, the case of Louis Burton is not at all similar but the cracks observed on Saturday evening worry everyone on the ground. IMOCAs are noisy machines where the solo sailors are constantly listening for suspicious noises. When it cracks hard, it means that the carbon structure has suffered.
A boat that is cracking also recalls the misadventure of Thomas Ruyant during the Vendée Globe in December 2016. Following a collision with a UFO, the Dunkirk resident saw his Imoca open like a can of sardines 260 miles from New -Zealand. Ruyant had finally managed to reach the small port of Bluff.
In the case of Burton, it is not a question of a shock but rather of a weakness of the structure in this rear part of the boat. “At this point, there are two tonnes, even 2.5 tonnes of compression,” adds the two-time winner of the Vendée Globe.
The question now is whether Burton has the means to repair things alone at sea. Above all, whether he considers it reasonable to continue a round-the-world trip with a cracked boat.
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