Death of yachtsman off Cap-Ferret

Brest, 12 September 2011.

On Monday 12 September at about 09:00h , the Cap Ferret signal station was alerted by the fishing boat “Atalante” that a sailing boat “Karantez VI” – a Pogo 2 class 6,50 – was under full sail with no-one aboard. The boat was adrift 8 nautical miles (14 km) from Cap-Ferret.

The Bordeaux customs plane carrying out maritime surveillance was rerouted to pinpoint the boat’s position. The security helicopter “Dragon 33” was sent to the area to do the initial man overboard searches.

Around 10:00h, the body of a man about 40 years old, wearing integrated buoyancy clothing displaying the name of the boat, was found on Lège-Cap-Ferret beach by a yachtsman.

A fisherman has moored the boat off Cap-Ferret. It is now being watched over by the Cap-Ferret signal station.

Weather: wind SW 4 knots (7km/h). Heavy swell 3.5 5 metres.

The drowned man was Mini-Transat entrant Jean-Marc Allaire, who was actually in his thirties. This reduces the number of starters on Sunday 25 September from 80 to 79, and cannot help but be at the back of their minds for all the competitors.

View Mini-Transat competitor lost at sea in a larger map

The top blue marker is where Jean-Marc Allaire’s boat was found. The lower one is the starting point for Emmanuel and Maximilien Berque’s voyage in the 5-metre catamaran Micromégas.

Cap-Ferret is on the northern side of the Passes d’Arcachon – the narrow strait through which the Arcachon basin empties between huge sandbanks.  A comment on the website for local newspaper Sud Ouest points out that this region is extremely dangerous during heavy Atlantic swells, with at least one serious accident per year.

The surf along this coast, including the entrance to the Bassin d’Arcachon, makes it a favourite with jet-skiers, as shown in this amateur video:

Marées d'équinoxe à Saint Malo en Bretagne
envoyé par leslucioles67. – Découvrez de nouvelles destinations en vidéo.

Sorry about the last few minutes, which just show an ad that is unlikely to be of any interest to you.

Greg jacked in the rat-race in his thirties. It sounds as if he was a typical overweight, stressed-out company man – he shed 50 pounds while training for a triathlon. Now one of Greg’s jobs is giving seminars on motivation. He’s certainly well-qualified to do so – take a look at the goals Greg has set himself. Already the holder of the world 24-hour human-powered land record, having pedalled 647 miles, he is now in his far more complex waterborne phase. The current trip of about 400Km is a warm-up for the main 4,300Km  trip from Tofino, BC to Hawaii. Let’s hope Greg and his colleague are still as good friends at the end of it all.

Here’s wishing you both success!

I’m unlucky. I even felt twinges of nausea once in a dinghy – in zero wind and an oily swell. Fairground roundabouts make me puke,  swingboats make me ill, and I couldn’t fly control-line model aircraft without falling over.

What’s worse is that I don’t throw up – I just get sweats and waves of nausea. Its the smooth harmonic motion that does it – random violent movement doesn’t worry me. I used to get airsick in low-flying propeller-driven passenger aircraft, so I was a little leary of riding in a Piper Arrow later in life. I needn’t have worried – I was quite happy replacing the fuse in the GPS as we flew into the edge of a thunderstorm.

Be that as it may, after a couple of seasons racing around the cans in boats with lids, I decided I really ought to give offshore racing a go, so I stocked up on Marzine. It worked quite well for deck work, but I would never have been able to ship as a navigator or cook. In dirty weather, I always dived for my bunk when I went below, and never hung around when donning foulies before climbing up to the cockpit.

Way back in about 1970, I helped design, build and sail what was then considered to be a light displacement yacht, but it had a fairly traditional hull form. I never sailed offshore in it, but I expect its motion wasn’t much different from that of boats twice her weight. I wonder how I would get on in a modern planing hull offshore? I hear people claim they can be uncomfortable, but I wouldn’t mind being slammed around as long as the movement was erratic. Anyway, I shall never know now.

Once more, the nearest competitors (Sam Davies and Marc Guillemot) are a few days away from it. Just as well – the race has been exciting enough without  having storm force winds while competitors are in a busy shipping lane.

I’m in luck. I can hear the wind building up, but I’m only expecting gusts up to 85 Km/h.