By SUZANNE MCFADDEN
Grant Dalton watched incredulously when a bow on his monster catamaran snapped off and floated past the boat as it crashed through the Atlantic.
Last night, the New Zealand skipper and his crew were safe but disheartened as the 33.5m Club Med limped back towards the east coast of the United States with one bow missing.
Dalton said the boat had been on course to break its own world speed record, zooming along at 26 knots in rough seas, when the port-side nose dug into a steep wave.
About one metre of the bow tore off, but the boat did not take on water - it was built with water-tight compartments in case of disaster.
Dalton said he was dumbfounded when the cat, only two months old, suffered the damage about 600 miles into the Atlantic Ocean off New York.
"It was a real 'oh boy'," he said. "We heard a smashing noise as the piece broke off, but we didn't know what it was until the bow rocketed past us.
"It was a surprise - I'd only been watching the beams and mast. Now the boat looks like a P-class with a pram nose."
The two bows on Club Med are sacrificial - built to break off if they hit anything, saving the rest of the boat from serious damage.
"It's like the crumple zone of a car. Trouble was, it was too sacrificial - it wasn't stuck on well enough," he said.
"We'll never really know if we hit anything or not - it's gone now."
The boat also appears to have suffered some minor structural damage, the out-hull twisting as the bow broke.
The fleet of ultra-fast, super-fragile multihulls, built for the non-stop circumnavigation The Race, have suffered nothing but trouble from launch day.
Five months ago, British sailor Pete Goss lost the entire left bow off his catamaran, Team Philips, on the tow-out into the Irish Sea. Billionaire Steve Fossett's PlayStation had to turn back to port on its first transatlantic record attempt when the boat started breaking, and Polish cat Polpharma-Warta lost its rig crossing the Atlantic.
Dalton said the mishaps were a necessary evil, to uncover the weaknesses of the boats before The Race starts from Barcelona on New Year's Eve.
"You've got to keep breaking them until eventually they are perfect," he said.
"In a few years' time, they'll be bulletproof, but we don't have a few years to get it right."
The boat is now motoring back to Newport, a frustratingly slow trip, which will take three days in the big seas. It will go into a boatyard in the United States, with repairs expected to take at least a month.
Said an optimistic Dalton: "We'll come out mid-September and break the transatlantic record."
Club Med set a record for the east-west crossing and the world 24-hour speed record last month.
Dalton's wife, Nicky, and their two children were on a flight to England yesterday. Airline crew were able to intercept them in Los Angeles to tell them the news.
Sailing: Disaster strikes Dalton's huge cat
AdvertisementAdvertise with NZME.