Antigua super yacht race collision

[Birdseye]

In the days of my youth I was a « wet » shipping lawyer. « Dry» ones do charter party and similar stuff and « wet » ones do collisions, salvage and insurance fraud. In the English law of collisions - which is the law applied to most collisions on the high seas, for insurance reasons which I won’t waste time with - there is a thing called « the agony of the moment

« The agony of the moment » is a defence to a collision claim where, typically, in the stress of seeing that a collision is imminent, someone puts the helm the wrong way.

I think that Topaz would have done better to bear off rather than to luff, but that is the opinion of someone sitting in comfort and watching a video clip. I think that her helmsman may have acted in the agony of the moment.

And it probably made no difference anyway.

Interesting. I suffered the "agony of the moment " once, and crash jibed a schooner when the foremast sheet shackle gave way. Took both booms out of the boat. Still make me squirm to think of it.