Brooksfield/Kospictures.com
We were all very focused on a single objective: save the boat and save our lives...
Wednesday 21 July 2010, 09:00 GMT
"They're safe, they're all alive!" is Carlo Marincovich's title on Italian national daily La Repubblica, echoed by Vincenzo Zaccagnino's on Corriere della Sera: "Lost among icebergs and huge ocean waves".
Continuing our look back in history ahead of the Legends regatta next year, Carla Anselmi takes us back to 5 December 1993. The Italian media is eager to publish news, any kind of news, on the Italian entry Brooksfield and her crew, who are in danger while taking part in the second leg of the Whitbread Round the World Race from Uruguay to Australia.
The green-hulled boat is some 2,000 nautical miles from Fremantle and 400 from the Kerguelen Islands, a remote archipelago inhabited only by a small group of researchers. They are in a very cold and unfriendly environment, when the onboard EPIRB (Emergency Position Indicating Radio Beacon) starts emitting a distress signal.
It's 8.18am. The crew is bailing out water after their rudder was ripped out, leaving a large hole in the hull, and their communication system is not working. The wind is blowing at gale force and the sea state is horrendous. Race Headquarters, which launched a rescue operation, is unable to make contact.
Stefano Vegliani, who was then a young sports reporter at Italian TV Mediaset, recalls: "As soon as the news got to my editor's desk, I received a frantic call and was ordered to start looking for details to produce a feature for the prime time news programme." Not an easy task, as the information is scarce and it is hard to keep emotion and anxiety down to a minimum.
After 12 hours, it's La Poste, the French maxi, which reaches Brooksfield and makes visual and audio contact. She stands by in case Brooksfield sinks while waiting for two US Navy ships to arrive and escort her to port.
The two skippers, La Poste's Daniel Mallé and Guido Maisto, skipper of Brooksfield, are unable to get too close due to the heavy seas. They communicate by VHF and fellow Italian sailor Matteo Plazzi on Winston listens to their conversation and transmits the first, patchy, information to Europe.
There are 11 men onboard: a group of young, strong Italians like Pietro D'Alì, Stefano Rizzi and Andrea Proto and three foreigners, French navigator Hervé Jan, and Swede Richard Brisius and Dutchman Peter Tans.
Helmsman and pivotal character for the team and this story is Mauro Pelaschier, probably Italy's most renowned sailor: Olympian, winner of many national and international races, and skipper of the famous America's Cup boat Azzurra, in 1983 and 1986. He comes from a village close to Trieste and from a family strongly related to the sea - his father, also a top athlete, and his grandfather were both boatbuilders.
The memory of what happened is still very vivid. "I did not agree on the decision to activate the EPIRB so early," says Pelaschier. "We were not sinking and we were not in immediate and serious danger, from a mariner's standpoint. Still, we had to react and I remember exactly how everyone, despite no precise order being given, started working, helping out. We were all very focused on a single objective: save the boat and save our lives."
It is the second time that the Bouvet and Petit-designed 60' has suffered damage to the rudder. The first one, less severe, happened in the English Channel just after the race start, but now the whole area is affected and seawater is flooding the cabin.
The crew looks for any possible means to stop it, and, showing a flash of creativity, they use a bucket, a mattress, and a long length of strong grey tape.
Meanwhile, on the other side of the planet in his office in Milan, team manager Corrado di Majo, tries to deal with the situation. An accomplished sailor himself, he had been the youngest competitor in the 1976 single-handed transatlantic race and completed The Whitbread twice, and with the help of press officer Paolo Matinoni he keeps the media informed.
"Our phones were ringing constantly. Journalists wanted to be updated, friends and families were understandably worried, but we could not communicate with our guys because all the electric and electronic devices were out of service in the back compartment of the boat and submerged by litres of salt water," he recalls.
"Luckily enough, the boats were all equipped with an automatic tracking system and we could see that Brooksfield was still sailing, albeit very slowly. And a specially designed spare rudder could replace the broken one.
"The worst part lasted less than 24 hours. It is true that we suffered structural issues, but the Whitbread 60 class was brand new and we all lacked experience on such boats."
Over the following hours, still in the middle of the huge depression with winds blowing well over 60 knots and big waves, the crew carried out a temporary repair. "I thought about my grandfather and the way the boats were once built," says Pelaschier, "and, with a split rope and sealing silicone, we tried and managed to caulk the hole."
It took two days for the Italian boat to go back to ‘standard' sailing mode and 10 days to reach land, the crew taking turns on the bilge pumps to keep the water intake under control. When Brooksfield arrived in Australia, Pelaschier stepped down and left the team. "I was sad and disappointed because I considered the round the world race one of the highest points I could reach in my sailing career," he confided.
Brooksfield finished the event in sixth place, but Pelaschier never went back to big offshore racing. Most of the crew from Brooksfield continued and some of them achieved brilliant results, having learned the great lesson of surviving the ocean.
If you have any stories on past Whitbread or Volvo Ocean Races, we would like to hear them. Send them to us with pictures too if you have them.