Leaving Ushant on Sunday morning, François Gabart and his teammates felt a shock with an unidentified object last night. Sodebo remains alone in the assault on the world tour in less than 40 days
This Tuesday at 1:10 a.m. (UT), while the SVR-Lazartigue trimaran was sailing in 25-30 knots of wind, 500 miles from the Azores Archipelago and 600 miles from Cape Verde, the crew felt a shock following a collision with an OANI (unidentified aquatic observations, Editor’s note).
The starboard foil was damaged and, after analyzing the damage, the decision was taken to turn around to reach Concarneau as quickly as possible, the sailboat’s home port, which it should reach between Friday and Sunday depending on the conditions and their progress.
Direction Concarneau
The team is hard at work studying the different options, including using their spare foil to attempt the Jules Verne Trophy as soon as a favorable weather window presents itself.
“During the night from Monday to Tuesday, we seriously damaged the starboard foil, probably following an impact. Difficult to say because we were sailing in rather tough conditions, there were 25-30 knots downwind, so it was going rather quickly and it was already hitting quite a bit in the waves, explained François Gabart. But suddenly the feeling was a little different from what we felt in the waves before, so we stopped.”
We might be able to get back behind it fairly quickly, as soon as a new window presents itself.
The skipper delivered a first diagnosis. “It’s the outer skins of the foil that are broken. We hope that the rest of the foil is not damaged, that is to say that the beam, the part of the internal structure of the foil, is not damaged, which would allow us to reuse it fairly quickly. Still, we have a starboard foil in Concarneau which is operational, it is the first version and it can sail. There we turned around because it seemed difficult and complicated that this foil could last a whole trip around the world.”
And to be optimistic to go back to conquering the Jules-Verne Trophy. “We still have the option and the opportunity to come back. We would arrive in Brittany in about three days, and potentially if there’s nothing else broken on the boat, we might be able to get back behind quite quickly, as soon as a new window presents itself. It’s obviously hard, because the boat was going well. But it’s not completely dead, there is still hope. We are still at the beginning of winter, at the start of stand-by, we have a second foil and there are still many things possible…”
