Racing sailboat may lose keel in middle of Indian Ocean

December 19 2007 - Somewhere in the middle of the Indian Ocean, one week away from the nearest port, Dominique Wavre and Michele Paret are sailing on Temenos II in the Barcelona World Race.  Their keel is threatening to fall off.  My thoughts go out to them and I think about Simon LeBon, former lead singer of Duran Duran.  During the 1985 Fastnet race in England the keel fell off of LeBon's 78 foot maxi-yacht Drum. The boat capsized and LeBon and his crew were trapped inside it for forty minutes. They broke through the hull and clambered on top of the overturned vessel. See the image at right. All were fortunately rescued. Drum didn't sink and was salvaged. After being fitted with a new keel Drum went on to more races including the Whitbread round the world race later that year. Drum was designed for speed rather than safety.  The hull was made light so that it would plane on top of the water.  The engineers who calculated the strength required around the keel obviously blew the calculation.  But, to be fair, in the early 1980's the concept of a light weight 78' ocean racing sailboat with a planing hull was relatively new. Limits were still being tested. It's harder to understand the problem arising today. Here are links to the keel story and other boating stories from around the world: Round the world sailboat racers risk losing keel in middle of Indian Ocean: - Stuff Powerboat with zero carbon footprint to seeks to set around the world speed record -  Metro UK German swan breaks off affair with plastic boat  for love with a real man:   - ShortNews.com X-41 voted best racer/cruiser sailboat for 2008  - SailWorld.com Set as favorite Bookmark Email This Hits: 1142 Trackback(0) TrackBack URI for this entry Comments (0) Subscribe to this comment's feed Write comment Name Email Comment smaller | bigger I have read and agree to the Terms of Usage. Write the displayed characters Add Comment

Last Updated ( Saturday, 05 July 2008 )

 

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