Vendée Globe - Stamm hits fishing boat
10 Nov 2008. At 01:30 Bernard Stamm arrived back in Port Olona, having collided with a fishing boat and broken Cheminées Poujoulat’s bowsprit. The Swiss are having a rough start, but Dominic Wavre got away again on schedule with electrics all working, at around 11:30 last night.
Stamm said he was with a bunch of competitors, and saw the fishing boat. Her course and position were not a concern when he went below, but a few minutes later he hit her nearly amidships. Presumably it was a glancing blow, or his boat would have been more severely damaged and he would have been thrown hard against something solid. He was unable to raise the fishing boat on the radio, but they can hardly have failed to notice being hit by a boat doing about ten knots and weighing about 15 tons.
So far, I have seen no mention of the fishing boat. To be working in the Bay of Biscay in moderate seas, it must have been fairly large, so unlikely to have suffered crippling damage - but I hope, with the kind of money that is being spent on this race, that someone considers it his duty to track the fishing boat down and check that all is well. If nothing else, there’ll be an insurance claim…
Meanwhile, let’s hope the shore team manage to repair Stamm’s bowsprit quickly and send him off again in pursuit of the fleet.
The next day, they discovered it was a small cargo vessel. Maybe not even the lights he saw earlier?