Rude Awakening, the IDEC crash
... written for Panbo by Ben Ellison and posted on Jul 11, 2005
Good gracious, that’s IDEC’s engine lying in the rocks beneath her destroyed hull. It must have been hairy for Francis Joyon to wake from deep sleep and get off this boat in the pitch dark. Sea & See has amazing pictures of IDEC both just before her record transatlantic passage, and just after the post-finish-line accident. I don’t fully understand how Joyon’s off course alarm works—“I was using the autopilot, and I think it must have taken her off course, as happened once or twice during the record - but I wasn't going fast enough this time to be warned of the change”—but what an extraordinary shame (and ‘nuts’ to the few cynics who think he did it for insurance!).
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