Photo © NCG Operations Room – MRCC Mauritius
How did a crew of highly skilled professionals, sailing the $6 million Team Vestas Wind in the current Volvo Ocean Race, succeed in hitting the Cargados Carajos shoals, in the Indian Ocean off Mauritius at 16 knots on the night of November 29, 2014? An independent accident report was released at the end of January which looked into the causes of the grounding.
Despite having state of the art electronic chartplotting systems and software, the navigator plotted a course that crossed what he thought was a seamount with a depth of 40 meters. Instead, they sailed straight into a reef. Remarkably, no one was seriously hurt and the crew successfully evacuated the Volvo Ocean 65.
How did the navigator make such a mistake? He relied on his chartplotter which did not show the hazards of the Cargados Carajos shoals, except when zoomed fully in. There were a full set of paper charts aboard which would have shown the reefs. The reefs were also described in the Sailing Directions and Pilot Book, but neither were aboard the boat. The accident report found that the position of the Cargados Carajos shoals was accurately represented on the paper and electronic charts. The Cargados Carajos shoals (also known as St. Brandon) were named by Portuguese sailors in 1506.
The Team Vestas Wind navigator, Wouter Verbraak, is a highly experienced sailor, navigator and weather router. As noted in the accident report, “He co-skippered the Open 60 Hugo Boss in the 2010-2011 Barcelona World Race (double handed). In 2001 he had completed two legs in the Volvo Ocean Race as co-navigator. In the 2008 Volvo Ocean Race he sailed nine out of ten legs as navigator. His sailing credentials included an America’s Cup, Admirals Cup, TP52 Med Cup, Middle Sea Race, Fastnet, TransPacific, Cape Town to Bahia Race, two TransAtlantic Races and the Sydney to Hobart. He co-skippered in the Volvo Baltic Race and advised sailors on strategy and weather in the Vendee, Route du Rhum, the Jacques Vabre and the Olympics. Wouter and Chris Nicholson sailed together as skipper and navigator on Rambler 90 in the Maxi-Worlds in 2007 and on the same boat in the same year as watch captain and navigator in the TransAtlantic Race.”
Toward the end of December, 24 days after running aground, Team Vestas Wind was salvaged. The Volvo Ocean 65 is now being repaired at Persico’s boatyard in Italy in hopes of returning to the race in June. When she returns, the boat will have a new navigator aboard. Wouter Verbraak was released from the team in January.
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Recently in the local/national news how GPS fails the same way.
One groupe of people, 3 if I remember correctly. Heading to the zoo ran out of gas in the desert and saved by a helicopter pilot.
But there were other cases, I reremember one in Europe left from around Germany and ended up in Italy.
And of course tthe recent ones lost in the US.
Not just lost, but in dangerous situations.
Learn to read a map people!
Just after the grounding there were reports from two other boats in addition to Vestas suggesting issues with the chartplotter/navigation. These were reported on the Volvo Ocean Race site, but since then I haven’t heard anything else about those reports. One navigator on another boat said that he had been looking at the chart for the route for two hours during the approach to the shoal and only saw the shoal when fully zoomed in. This would be consistant with Vestas Wind’s experience. The second report was from Dong Feng where one of the sailors commented that they had to have a last minute gybe to avoid the shoals. In looking at the track on VOR site it did appear they had a gybe close to the shoal. Whether it was planned or not couldn’t be confirmed from the reports. If unplanned that was a definate near miss.
Hopefully the full report includes interviews with sailors on all the boats to determine if there were other issues such as those suggested by these initial reports.
If those initial reports from two other boats could be confrmed then it would indicate serious issues with the electronics since it would indicate that 3 of the 7 boats were fortunate to end up grounded.
oops – last line should read. “it was fortunate the race didn’t end up with 3 of 7 boats grounded”