News Around the World
The literal translation of the French Navy report of the rescue of PRB skipper Kevin Escoffier describes recovering ‘a lone mariner who has been shipwrecked’. An apt use of words considering that Escoffier’s Imoca broke into two parts in a matter of a few seconds after piling into a wave leaving everything forward of the mast pointing skywards at 90 degrees. PRB was built in 2010 and continually modified – and lightened – ever since including the addition of foils for the 2020 Vendée Globe. While the boat was reinforced last winter to cope with the extra loads the latest work was done without the involvement of the original design team of Guillaume Verdier and VPLP. One engineer originally involved in the build of the boat has suggested that the catastrophic failure was most likely to have been one violent episode but as the culmination of a steady degradation of the main composite structure that ultimately cried enough
FRANCE Kevin Escoffier was lying in third place in the Vendée Globe on 30 November at some 840nm SW of Cape Town when his Imoca PRBgot into difficulties and he was forced to take to his liferaft very rapidly. He alerted his technical team telling them he had significant amounts of water coming into the boat and immediately triggered his yacht’s distress beacon. Fortunately Jean Le Cam was not far behind and could rescue Kevin in the middle of the night. Later on Kevin explained: ‘It’s unbelievable what happened. My
boat PRB folded up on a wave at 27kt. I heard a bang but, to be honest, I didn’t need to hear that to know what had happened. I looked at the bow. It was at 90°. In a few seconds there was water everywhere. The stern was under water [with the liferaft] and the bow was pointing up to the sky. ‘The boat split in half in front of the mast bulkhead. It was as
if she folded up. There was an angle of 90° between the stern and the bow. I didn’t have time to do anything, just to send a message to my team. “I’m sinking. I’m not joking. Mayday.” Between the moment when I was out on deck trimming the sails and when I found myself in my survival suit barely two minutes had passed. It all happened extremely quickly… ‘I came out of the boat and put on my survival suit. I could see
smoke. The electronics were burning. Everything went off. My only reflex was to grab my telephone to send the message and pick up the survival suit which I never stow away. I wanted to pick up the grab bag, but I couldn’t get to it with the water rising. I grabbed the liferaft at the stern and I was simultaneously washed off the boat and clambering into it as it automatically inflated.’ Guided by race control, Le Cam arrived on zone around 16.15
UTC and quickly established visual and voice contact with Escoffier who was in his liferaft but he was unable to retrieve him in the big 5m seas and 20-25kt winds. As he was manoeuvring to prepare to get closer to the liferaft
20 SEAHORSE
Le Cam was losing sight of the rubber boat and could not establish radio contact nor pick up the signal from the AIS – the range of which was reduced by the heavy seas. Eventually he lost sight of Escoffier altogether in the dying light but continued to try to locate him with the help of race HQ (with erratic positions coming from Escoffier’s Epirb) who asked three other boats in the vicinity (Seaexplorer, Arkea Paprec, Maître Coq IV) to come to the zone. Fortunately, at about 01.20, Le Cam spotted a beam of light
bouncing off a wave and he realised that he had finally located Escoffier again. Soon he was close enough for the PRB skipper to leap onto the stern of Yes We Cam! grabbing hold of the tiller arms. Kevin related: ‘For me I was going to stay the whole night in the liferaft, that was what I was thinking, it was OK for me, it was safer to switch from one to the other with less wind and waves. ‘I had spent the night quite well. I mean I wasn’t comfortable,
but in my head it was better: I was sure that the day after someone would be coming when the wind and waves had died down [the reason probably why Kevin prefers to wait before using the life - raft flares], and then I’d be able to get from the liferaft to the boat… ‘Close to the morning I heard a sail flapping so I got my head
out of the liferaft and I saw it wasn’t dark any more because of the moon; even with no sun we were able to see very well and I saw Jean 100-200m from me. ‘I asked him, “Now, we’re doing it now?” and he said “Yes, yes,
let’s do it now.” Then he told me, “I will come next to you.” ‘He wanted to have his boat parallel to the liferaft but he was
a bit too fast and it was 5m away when he threw me a line with a buoy on it which I caught. Both of us were pulling to quickly get the liferaft as close as possible to his boat, and when I was close enough I jumped and caught a bar at the back of the boat!’ Kevin lived two miracles in a short period of time: he succeeded
in saving his life by acting perfectly in the few minutes while his boat PRB was rapidly sinking and, later on, he was rescued during
PAUL-DAVID COTTAIS/MARINE NATIONALE
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