The INEOS Britannia team joined the ‘Slow Mo Capsize Club’ over the weekend.
The LEQ12 crew – Giles Scott and Leigh McMillan on the wheels with Bleddyn Mon and Iain Jensen – were soon hurtling around the Bay of Palma at speeds well into the 40-knot bracket in a blustery 15-18 knot breeze.
T6 – the Silver Bullet – looked rocked solid in flight and around the corners with dynamic sail control through the puffy conditions into the afternoon.
Then came a most curious low-speed capsize as T6 came to what seemed like a gentle wind-down to displacement.
While on a prolonged fast downwind run – during which the yacht topped 40 knots – after slowing and coming off foils, the crew appeared to lose partial control of the foils.
At one point the windward and leeward foils were both elevated, resulting in a slow speed capsize to leeward while on port gybe.
With the two sailors in the windward pod perched above the water, the two leeward crew were easily able to swim or climb free, meanwhile, the chase boat crews were quickly into action.
The Slow Mo Capsize ended with T6 sitting comfortably on its side with the mast horizontal . . . courtesy of an inflated buoyancy bag sitting in between the sail skins at the top of the mainsail.
A tow line attached to a canvas sling was passed to the upper pod sailors who appeared to attach it somewhere at the front of the cockpit.
However, this approach did not work and instead the tow line was attached to the bow for the boat to be towed head-to-wind and finally righted.
Rob Wilson, the ‘Supercoach’ to INEOS Britannia summed it up calmly afterwards saying . . .
“It was pretty benign to be honest and it kind of feels quite good to join the club as well because it’s just a test of how the shore guys are going to react to that and it was all very calm, quite an efficient righting procedure so it was good to get that under the belt.”
And talking about what caused the splashdown, Wilson added . . .
“We need to have a little look at the data but you’ve probably seen, and I’m sure you got it on the video, we ended up with two boards up in the air and so not a lot of righting moment and there was about 18 knots at the time.”
The professionals might make recovery look easy but after a week when Emirates Team New Zealand corkscrewed into a capsize on a fast bear-away, and now INEOS Britannia ‘joining the club’ it’s a feature of the AC40 that teams have to get to grips with.
The INEOS Britannia shore team will now be undertaking a thorough inspection to ensure no damage to the complex electronics.
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