Vendee Globe and Alex Thomson / Hugo Boss

Seven Spades

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if I am correct three boats have been damaged by objects in the water, two with rudder damage and one with damage to foils. I am really starting to wonder if they are hitting mammals but for political reasons not reporting it as such. It’s not good P.R.
 

Frogmogman

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Luck is not the Issue. Highly developed boat with inadequate testing and a boat breaker at the helm.
Oh, come on.

There has always been a fine line in this race between pushing hard enough to win the race, and pushing so hard that something breaks. Then there are those incidents which are plain bad luck, which may well be the case with the rudder damage.

This is Thomson's 5th participation in this race. In the last one, he finished second despite having a damaged foil for much of the race. Don't underestimate his ability or his determination.

FWIW, the Golden Globe was not without it's share of breakages in a bunch of MABs. If anything, that race proved that for racing downwind in the Southern Ocean, slow and heavy boats are more easily overwhelmed than these high speed, skimming sleds.
 
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Dutch01527

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Amazing how internet keyboard warriors turn on their bile instantly something goes wrong.

”Boat Breaker“ and “Serious Sponsor” are disgraceful terms to use about a tough, skilful and brave man and a company that has spent 10’s of millions to promote our sport. Like any world class sport, they have to live on the edge. That is why formula one cars break down especially when first developed and people die trying to climb Everest.
 

Frogmogman

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if I am correct three boats have been damaged by objects in the water, two with rudder damage and one with damage to foils. I am really starting to wonder if they are hitting mammals but for political reasons not reporting it as such. It’s not good P.R.
They're certainly in an area where there are lots of whales. In Charlie Dalin's video 2 days ago, he had encountered several big ones.

Web TV : Charlie DALIN - Vendée Globe - En
 

LONG_KEELER

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I would think Hugo Boss is pretty happy with the publicity at the moment .

In this age of PC, constant judgement and blame, and being pushed around by the ruling elites ,a bunch of nutters, using crazy cool machines, sailing round the globe with someone else bank rolling, is about the best release you can get from it. Just hope it could have been me
 

Airscrew

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I think Alex must end this cooperation with “Hugo Boss” and start to sail with a serious team/sponsor.

Methinks you are living in a dream. Its dificult to name a more serious or professional team. You think VPLP are not a serious outfit?

Do you think the rudder problem is a design problem, or a skipper problem.
Thats the impression you are giving people, when most others would expect it to be UFO problem.
HB, like some others, carry a spare rudder. What does that tell you?

It has been well documented and discussed., that across he field, these boats have differing design points and optimisations, and with the new boats, that mean intentional design.
ATR and a couple of others have made it clear they (with VPLP) have designed boats to be very fast and to win. You and others might choose a tortoise strategy - midfield speed and hope for some bad luck to others. You and they might win.

But is that racing?
Is that the spirit of this race that you want.?
 

Ric

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if I am correct three boats have been damaged by objects in the water, two with rudder damage and one with damage to foils. I am really starting to wonder if they are hitting mammals but for political reasons not reporting it as such. It’s not good P.R.

Unfortunately I think you are correct that they are hitting marine mammals.

Sound travels very fast in water, making it very hard to detect the direction from which a sound is coming when underwater. Any scuba divers on here will be aware of the phenomena by which any passing surface boat appears to pass directly overhead because the sound reaches both ears at exactly the same intensity so our direction finding does not work so our brain thinks the noise is heading straight to us until the intensity starts to fade and our brain thinks the boat is going directly away from us.

I have never seen any research into this, but I suspect that the krill feeding whales (which have no directional hearing) avoid boats by just swimming in a random direction until they find a direction which decreases the intensity. But this tactic can only work if they swim faster than the boat is moving. If they can only swim slower than the approaching boat, then the noise will increase whichever direction they swim and will appear to be coming straight at them whichever way they turn.

In the last Vendee globe, one boat (I think Kito Pavant) hit something and lost its keel and eventually he had to abandon the boat. However, he grabbed all his onboard GoPros and once back in France they were examined and they showed what appears to be a whale in the wake of the boat immediately after the collision.

I have read of some research in France into adding underwater whale warning sound generators to the boats which emit lower frequencies which can be heard earlier by the whales.
 

Roberto

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I have read of some research in France into adding underwater whale warning sound generators to the boats which emit lower frequencies which can be heard earlier by the whales.
A number of this VG edition boats mount it already, they call it "the pinger". Together with the "Oscar" system they are the two additions to try and reduce the risk of accidental contact with floating object or marine mammals.
Not sure they are that efficient, the rate of accidents seems more or less similar to previous races.
 

mainsail1

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Alex did say that they had a whale sonic device on the hull to alert whales that the boat is nearby but how does the poor beast have time to do anything useful when the boat is moving towards it at 20 to 30knots?
Anyway, why should the poor Whale have to get out of the way?
 
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capnsensible

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Alex did say that they had a whale sonic device on the hull to alert whales that the boat is nearby but how does the poor beast have time to do anything useful when the boat is moving towards it at 20 to 30knots?
Anyway, why should the poor Whale have to get out of the way?
Is it to avoid getting wellied by a 20 to 30 knot yacht?
 
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