31m Ultime trimaran Sodebo Ultime had collided with a cargo ship

Wow, the boat lost the front of two of three hulls and is still making 15 knots. Strong boat.

This race is amazing and pretty crazy in today's world of massive shipping traffic.

This is a SOLO 3,500 mile course, so the skippers have to sleep sometimes and today's container ships are mostly automated and don't always keep "military style" watches. They could run over one of these sailboats, even the 70 foot ones and never even notice it.

If you haven't been following the Route Du Rhum, "Destination Guadeloupe", here is a link to the tracker.
http://www.routedurhum.com/fr/s02_corporate/s02p08_cartographie.php

After three days and 5 hours the overall leader Loick Peyron on the amazing Banque Populaire VII, he is already over 700 miles ahead of the leader of the RHUM class (40-60 foot monohulls).

Some specs:
center hull length: 40 meters (131 feet)
Length floats: 37 meters (122)
Width: 23 meters (75 feet)
Displacement: 23 tons (50,706 pounds)
Draught: 5.80 meters (19 feet)
Top of Mast: 47 meters (154 feet)
80 tons of pressure at the foot of the mast winches
Mainsail: 450 m2 (4,844 square feet)
gennaker: 610 m2 (6,566 square feet)
Number of Crew: ONE BAD ASS MF'er

Here's a direct link to a nice race tracker supplied by the Spindrift 2 trimaran which is chasing Banque Populaire VII for the lead.

http://spindrift2-routedurhum.addviso.org/fr/

Here is a video of the start produced by Spindrift who seem to have an unlimited media budget based on their website and all the email updates they send.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s1DZD4I5qj8#t=114

Its not the first time this skipper, Thomas Coville lost a bow-section. In his
first attempt to sail around the world solo he ran into a small iceberg.
Here's a interview, funny english. But hitting a wave at 41 knots.. Crazy.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B_51USO0l8w

Less than half an hour into his second attempt around the world,
this happened.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QP-67_sPgGc

DamonLinkous wrote: Wow, the boat lost the front of two of three hulls and is still making 15 knots. Strong boat.

This race is amazing and pretty crazy in today's world of massive shipping traffic.

This is a SOLO 3,500 mile course, so the skippers have to sleep sometimes and today's container ships are mostly automated and don't always keep "military style" watches. They could run over one of these sailboats, even the 70 foot ones and never even notice it.

Must take a gigantic righting bag to turn that thing back over. 🙂