Luke Berry and co-skipper Antoine Joubert were competing in the Transat Jacques Vabre on the Ocean 50 trimaran Le Rire Médecin-Lamotte when the boat dismasted and lost its port float. In an extraordinary effort, assisted by French salvage expert Adrien Hardy, Berry and Joubert were able to save not only the boat, but all its parts. After being towed to Spain they then sailed home to St Malo under jury rig, on just one float: proa-style.
The incident happened hours after the Ocean 50 fleet restarted the Transat Jacques Vabre from Lorient on 6 November, racing in 25-30 knots and 5m waves. “At the start, everybody was quite conservative,” Berry told YW.
“We were very conservative – we had two reefs and the J3, nearly the smallest amount of sail. But we were sailing quite far off the wind. At 70° these boats go very, very fast. And at one point she just jumped off the wave and when she landed, the whole thing collapsed.”
Both the port hull sheared off and the rig came down simultaneously. “The beam that links both the hulls snapped to leeward, meaning the leeward float detached itself from the boat. Normally, the boat should capsize. But in this case, the dismasting actually saved us. We don’t know why: was it the impact of the wave or was it because the leeward hull broke and there was less tension in the leeward shroud?
“This is something I’ve experienced before, so I know you’ve got to secure as much as possible if you want to have any chance of getting your mast or your sails back.”
RESCUE BACK-UP
Berry alerted the race committee who in turn notified rescuer Hardy, shadowing the Ocean 50 fleet on his 35m/115ft trimaran Merida as far as Madeira, part of a class-organised initiative that teams subscribe to. Merida arrived a couple of hours later in the early morning.
“It was still pitch black and there was 4m swell and 25 knots of wind. We talked on the VHF and assessed the situation, then [Hardy’s team] put their wetsuits on, put their RIB in the water and they came on board to help us,” said Berry.
“The first thing was to get rid of the free float, but it’s not just attached by the carbon beams, it’s also attached by the whole net, which is lots of little bits of Dyneema lashing. So we had to cut all of it to completely free it, and take the shrouds off. We’d done a lot of work already, but we were quite exhausted by the time the crew came. So we managed to get rid of the float,
