The first victims of the mechanical breakdown on the Transat Jacques Vabre, with their dismasting on Sunday evening barely 10 hours after leaving Le Havre, Louis Burton and Davy Beaudart gave their news this Monday afternoon by sending a video. Against a background of a sky as gray as his morale, the third in the last Vendée Globe and his boyfriend recounted their misadventure on their Vallée 3 office. “
We are coming to our senses. We had a night with a lot of work to bring the material on board, the sails, the pieces of masts, the cables. We had a trying night. At the moment, we are concentrating on finishing shipping the boat to Saint-Malo and then we will try to understand what happened,
”explained Louis Burton.
Sad to have to give up the race so quickly, the sailor clarified the circumstances of the incident: “
We had just passed the Raz Blanchard, we were in the process of arriving in the north of the island of Guernsey. What is surprising is that despite the strong tidal coefficients, the sea was not bad. There was 15 knots of wind, it was going fast but not forcing. We heard a pretty impressive noise half an hour before the dismasting. We wondered if we hadn't typed something. We checked everything and the load cells, but nothing had changed. We were under a high mainsail with a head sail. Our speed was 18-19 knots when it broke. I was in the cockpit adjusting, Davy, he navigating. The first noise sounded like an explosion, the mast did not fall, it almost imploded. Then there were crunches,then we heard a shock on the bridge. There we understood that the mast had fallen
".
And the adopted Malouin added: “
We were not in violent sea and wind conditions.
So, either we had a load cell that didn't give us the right information, or a part broke.
We have saved all the sails that we are going to have repaired.
Then, we will have to analyze and try to save some coins.
The idea is to see if we can find another mast relatively quickly so that we can be ready as quickly as possible and start sailing again.
"
