Kevin Escoffier\u2019s Vend\u00e9e Globe rescue from a liferaft adrift in the Roaring Forties was the result of incredible seamanship. Helen Fretter spoke to him, and the team that co-ordinated the search\u201cI AM SINKING. THIS IS NOT A JOKE. MAYDAY\u201d
\nAt 1345 (UTC) on Monday 30 November, on a grey and lumpy South Atlantic some 840 miles south-west of Cape Town, Kevin Escoffier was 3rd in the single-handed Vend\u00e9e Globe when his boat, the IMOCA 60 PRB, suddenly and catastrophically broke up. Escoffier had time only to send a three line Whatsapp message to his shore team before all communication with the boat was lost. It would be 11 hours before anyone on land heard from him again. This is the story of his stunning Vend\u00e9e rescue.
\nBefore he had any indication anything was wrong, Escoffier was racing fast in 22-25 knot south-westerlies. He was around 20 miles behind 2nd placed LinkedOut, with Jean Le Cam in 4th around 25 miles behind.
\nWhile some skippers had been plagued by gear damage, PRB was in good shape. The only problem Escoffier had had to deal with was a valve failure in a foil well a couple of weeks previously, which he joked had turned his boat into \u2018jacuzzi mode\u2019 as water sloshed around inside. Escoffier fixed the valve and raced on, moving up to 3rd as he approached the Cape of Good Hope.
\nOn the afternoon of 30 November, PRB was thundering south-east at 17 knot averages. \u201cI had a very good 48 hours before the incident, I had good speed,\u201d Escoffier told us from Le Cam\u2019s IMOCA after his rescue.
\n\u201cWe knew that we were going to get stronger winds and a worse sea state, so I decided to furl my fractional gennaker, and go for the J2.
\nPRB before the incident. Photo: Jean-Marie Liot\/PRB
\n\u201cThe wind was quite quickly increasing from 25 to 30 knots with a sea state increasing to 5-5.5m. It was quite short waves, not a nice angle. Sometimes it was nice surf, but when you dropped off the surf \u2013 and I had one wave that we surfed at 30 knots \u2013 then you were quite fast.
\n\u201cBut I was ready, I had the J2 up and two reefs in the main. For 30 knots, two reefs with a J2 is even under powered, so for me everything was going well.\u201d
\nDisaster strikes
\nWithout warning, PRB snapped in two. \u201cThe boat folded in on itself in a wave at 27 knots,\u201d Escoffier reported. \u201cI heard a crack but honestly didn\u2019t need the noise to understand. I looked at the bow, it was at 90\u00b0.
\n\u201cWithin seconds, there was water everywhere.\u00a0The stern of the boat was underwater and the bow was pointing skyward. You\u2019ve seen images of shipwrecks? It was like that, but worse. In four seconds the boat nosedived and the bow folded up. It was completely crazy.\u201d
\nThe waves PRB had been surfing on surged through the hull, flooding it instantly as the bow broke away forward of the mast bulkhead. \u201cI saw smoke, the electronics were burning and everything was extinguished.\u00a0The only reflex I had was to grab the phone to send this message,\u201d he said.
\nBack in the French port of Les Sables d\u2019Olonne, Vend\u00e9e Globe race organisers got their first warning of a problem when PRB\u2019s EPIRB was triggered. Assistant race director Hubert Lemonnier explained: \u201cRight at the same time we got a message, and a call from the team confirming the distress.
\n\u201cThat\u2019s the worst case scenario, when MRCC call and say we have an EPIRB alert. Because it means that the skipper had no time, and no means of communication to liaise with us.\u201d
\nDuring the sinking, Escoffier found himself in the water, with his liferaft uninflated.Photo: Marine Nationale\/D\u00e9fense
\nThe race team could see that PRB was in serious trouble. \u201cWe tried to call him on different sat phones and there was no tone at all. Also, we had no position report. The tracker is plugged into the boat power and if the tracker is definitely off, that meant no power on the boat. All of those things together made us think that the situation was very bad.\u201d
\nAlmost immediately race control contacted Jean Le Cam, the closest skipper to PRB\u2019s last known position around 20 miles away, and asked him to divert to assist.
\nBack on PRB, Escoffier was having to make split-second decisions. \u201cMy first decision was a good one, and it was to put on my survival suit, my \u2018TPS\u2019. That was the first thing I did, before I try and take my grab bag, and I think that was my best decision,\u201d he recalled.
\nNo lines of communication
\nEscoffier then picked up the only accessible grab bag. \u201cBut it was the one with food and water, because the grab bag with the satellite phone and the VHF were already too deep in the water. It was under the step of the hatch and the water was already too high. Maybe I should have dived to grab it, but I did not know how long the boat will stay [floating] so I did not take that chance. That was the worst thing for me.\u201d
\nPRB\u2019s broken hull was rapidly awash in 3m waves. \u201cIt was becoming impossible for me to stay on the boat, I would not have been able to stay on the deck.
\n\u201cFor me the issue was: is it possible for an IMOCA to float when you don\u2019t have the bow anymore, with just half of the hull? Because the keel was attached to the back of the boat where I was, so if you lose half of the stability of the boat, maybe the half-boat can sink?
\n\u201cI had all of these engineer\u2019s questions in my head \u2013 should I stay on the boat or go in the liferaft? The decision was not easy, and a wave helped me to decide because I was washed off the deck. I ended up in the water, with the liferaft not \u2018popped\u2019.\u201d
\nEscoffier was able to send only a brief distress message. Photo: Yann Riou\/Polaryse
\nEscoffier was able to inflate and climb into the liferaft, but had no way of communicating. However, one more good habit helped his survival chances. Unlike many solo skippers, Escoffier wore a small personal AIS beacon tucked in a pocket.
\n\u201cBecause I come from crewed sailing I\u2019ve always got one in my in my wet weather gear trouser pocket. I think it\u2019s very important for every sailor to have that: it\u2019s cheap, it\u2019s small, works well and it\u2019s very accurate.
\n\u201c[Single-handed sailors] may not wear it, thinking there\u2019s no point because any people will be too far away, and it\u2019s not the case,\u201d he emphasised.
\nVend\u00e9e rescue begins
\nThe more accurate positioning of the personal AIS beacon at short range helped pinpoint Escoffier\u2019s initial location.
\nTwo hours after getting the call to divert, Jean Le Cam arrived at PRB\u2019s last known location (40\u00b055\u2019S, 9\u00b018\u2019E).
\n\u201cThe sea was very rough. He was going on the last position report, and when he got right next to the boat position, he saw a MOB alert on his radar on his Adrena, so the personal AIS was transmitting,\u201d explained Lemonnier. \u201cHe headed to that point, slowly, reducing speed as much as he could, and then went outside \u2013 we had him on Skype at the time \u2013 and when he came back inside the boat he told us, \u2018I just saw Kevin. He\u2019s in his liferaft.\u2019
\nHowever, while Le Cam had quickly arrived at Escoffier\u2019s position, his boat was not set up for a mid-ocean rescue. Before attempting to pick up Escoffier, he had to unseal and start his engine, and put in another reef. By the time Le Cam had readied his boat and returned to Escoffier\u2019s position, he could not see the raft or the AIS beacon position (which may have been due to the rough sea state). After re-crossing his path repeatedly in a desperate search, Le Cam was exhausted and starting to get disorientated.
\n\u201cHe went six or seven times passing around. He came back after and said, \u2018I can\u2019t find him again. I don\u2019t know where he is. I\u2019ve been turning around. I lost track of everything. I can\u2019t even remember myself where I am.\u2019\u201d
\nJean Le Cam resting. Photo: Kevin Escoffier\/PRB
\nLe Cam needed to rest. With darkness approaching and other IMOCAs rapidly passing PRB\u2019s position, race control requested Boris Herrmann (SeaExplorer), Yannick Bestaven (Ma\u00eetre CoQ) and Sebastien Simon (Arkea Paprec) divert to the scene. The skippers were set up on a Whatsapp group with their team managers and race control.
\nPredicting drift
\nThe idea of solo skippers using an instant messaging service in the remotest oceans would have seemed extraordinary just a couple of years ago, but the IMOCAs are now running a communications package called Thales Vesselink on Iridium\u2019s Certus platform which offers an \u2018always-on\u2019 connection.
\nBesides enabling faster weather downloads and video uploads, it has meant the skippers can chat as they race. It allowed Escoffier to send his SOS message using a standard mobile phone connected to PRB\u2019s wifi, and the race office in France to video call Jean Le Cam by Skype for the entire duration of the rescue.
\nHaving summoned a search and rescue party, race organisers now had to work out where to send them, calculating how far Escoffier\u2019s liferaft could have drifted and mapping out a search area.
\n\u201cWe were using two main things to identify the point of entry. That was the wreck of the boat, and the MOB AIS where Jean saw Kevin.
\n\u201cThen Christian Dumard, our weather provider, built a polygon of drift. That was basically a triangle with a plus-3, plus-6, plus-9 and plus-12 hours. That gave us the first rough idea where the liferaft could drift. Then French MRCC have their own calculations system as well, along with Meteo France.\u201d
\nWithin 45 minutes of the request from Vend\u00e9e Globe HQ, French MRCC came back with two files \u2013 a \u2018worst case scenario\u2019 based on a light raft that would drift rapidly, and a smaller search area based on a heavier raft with a drogue anchor. At the time, Lemonnier says, they did not know what type of raft Escoffier was in. The different options were overlaid, and largely agreed. However, the potential search area was widening rapidly.
\n\u201cIt was quite big, but actually we thought it was bigger than it was in reality. So we were expecting a distance of around 14 nautical miles north of the last MOB AIS position. In the end, he was found very much closer.\u201d
\nScreengrab from race control\u2019s Adrena navigation programme showing the search zones and pattern.
\nThe three skippers were each allocated a zone depending on which point of the triangle they would arrive at, and given precise instructions of how to search their areas: sailing east-west, as slowly as they could, to cover an area of 7.5 nautical miles of longitude, and 0.4 nautical miles latitude. All three were short-tacking repeatedly, with three reefs in the main, every tack taking around 20 minutes.
\nSebastien Simon was sent to an EPIRB position report that, while not aligning with where they thought Escoffier could be, the race team did not want to ignore. Simon found no raft, but suspected he saw a flashlight. Le Cam was sent to another position, which seemed to line up with the drift prediction track, but yet again the black seas were empty.
\nThe trackers on all four rescue skippers\u2019 boats had been set to issue two minutes position updates, so the race team could see Le Cam was in position. Just after 0100 he went on deck, shouting and searching in the pitch dark, while the race team waited. \u201cWe didn\u2019t know what was happening. And 15 minutes later, he came back into the boat and just right behind him, there was Kevin.\u201d
\nIn the end, Escoffier\u2019s recovery from the liferaft was swift. \u201cI saw a flash, but in fact it was a reflection that glinted off a wave,\u201d Le Cam reported. \u201cBut the more I got closer to the light I saw it more and more. It is amazing because you switch from despair to an unreal moment in an instant.\u201d
\nEscoffier with his rescuer Jean Le Cam, who resumed racing straight after the incident.
\n\u201cI put myself to windward of him. Kevin asked me \u2018Will you be back?\u2019 I said, \u2018No we are doing this now!\u2019 Then at one point the boat was falling backwards too fast in reverse and he was just there, two metres off the stern. Thank goodness I had prepared the red life ring that is usually in the cockpit. I threw it to him, and he caught it\u2026 and then he managed to pull himself in to catch the rudder link bar. And that was it.\u201d
\nWhy did PRB break up?
\nWhile Escoffier\u2019s rescue is close to miraculous, it has raised serious questions. How could an IMOCA 60, especially one as well proven and thoroughly prepared as PRB, break up so disastrously?
\nOne key learning from the incident is that it is possible for an IMOCA to sink very, very suddenly. Organisers have since modified the rules to allow skippers to unseal their grab bags if needed in order to make them more accessible in case of a sudden evacuation.
\nJust nine days earlier, Vend\u00e9e skipper Alex Thomson shared shocking videos of cracking in internal structures around the bow area of Hugo Boss. But the cracks, while serious enough to warrant that Thomson paused racing and repaired, were contained to a few areas of the boat, and, crucially, could be both found and fixed.
\nPRB was launched in 2009\/10, from the Verdier-VPLP design partnership, for Vincent Riou\u2019s 2012 and 2016 Vend\u00e9e Globes (Riou retired from both following collisions). It was known to be among the lightest IMOCAs of its generation, and fast enough to keep pace with the early foilers in the 2016 Vend\u00e9e, as well as winning two Transat Jacques Vabres.
\nEscoffier had worked with Riou on his IMOCA campaigns, and was also a key part of the design team for projects such as Banque Populaire\u2019s maxi trimaran, and crew on Dongfeng in the Volvo Ocean Race. Combining Escoffier\u2019s design and technical knowledge, and the 10 years of development Riou had invested, PRB was understood to be among the best prepared boats in the fleet.
\nIn 2018, Riou modified PRB with foils designed by Juan Kouyoumdjian, and Escoffier further reinforced the boat ahead of the 2020 Vend\u00e9e. Immediately after being rescued, Escoffier\u2019s reaction was disbelief at how the boat had failed, saying: \u201cI have zero regrets about the boat. I added 200kg of carbon. I reinforced everything.\u201d
\nA few days later, when he spoke to us from Yes We Cam! he had been mulling over possible causes for the failure.
\n\u201cIt could be an issue on the bottom of the hull, but I don\u2019t believe that because, compared to Alex, I had a monolithic construction on the hull so it\u2019s very strong and the boat was well proved.
\nI\u2019d done much faster speeds against waves before the race to check how safe the boat was, than what I\u2019d been doing in the race. So for me it is more flexing of the deck and when the deck buckled all the load went through the bottom of the hull.
\n\u201cSomething quite the same happened on the previous Vend\u00e9e Globe to Thomas Ruyant with a sistership of this boat (formerly Groupe Bel) and he also broke his deck.
\nDamage to Thomas Ruyant\u2019s Souffle du Nord in 2016.
\n\u201cMe knowing that, I put some reinforcements under the deck to avoid these kind of issues. And maybe since I put reinforcements, instead of breaking only the deck, I broke everything. It\u2019s a very technical discussion, and I\u2019m looking forward to having it with the architect and designers. Right now it\u2019s only my imagination and my engineering knowledge that can push me to think that.\u201d
\nWe put the question of what might have happened to PRB to Guillaume Verdier, who originally designed the boat. He replied: \u201cI don\u2019t know much about the failure. We suppose it is a deck or maybe sides of the boat that broke.
\n\u201cVincent Riou did his own development, and had reinforced the deck. However, we were not involved (neither me or VPLP) in any modifications concerning deck reinforcement and foil design and implantation.
\n\u201cI do not know how the foils are fitted structurally. It may well that the foil sheared the sides of the boat or that the deck was damaged.\u201d
\nFoil designer Juan K also clarified: \u201cI was not involved in the structures of PRB nor any reinforcements that have been added. I have, however, full confidence in Kevin and his capacity to have dealt with this properly.\u201d
\nVerdier added: \u201cMy feeling is that there must have been a progressive damage (like debonding of the core) that slowly, slowly progresses to create such a dramatic failure.
\n\u201cI believe old boats should go through compulsory physical structure tests before such races. It is a terrible accident. We were very fortunate it ended positively.\u201d
\nIf you enjoyed this\u2026.<\/p>\n
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The post Vend\u00e9e Globe rescue: Kevin Escoffier on his sinking and recovery appeared first on Yachting World.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Kevin Escoffier\u2019s Vend\u00e9e Globe rescue from a liferaft adrift in the Roaring Forties was the result of incredible seamanship. Helen Fretter spoke to him, and the team that co-ordinated the search\u201cI AM SINKING. THIS IS NOT A JOKE. MAYDAY\u201d At … <\/p>\n