Rude Awakening, the IDEC crash

Ideccrash05_017

Good gracious, that’s IDEC’s engine lying in the rocks beneath her destroyed hull. It must have been hairy for Francis Joyon to wake from deep sleep and get off this boat in the pitch dark. Sea & See has amazing pictures of IDEC both just before her record transatlantic passage, and just after the post-finish-line accident. I don’t fully understand how Joyon’s off course alarm works—“I was using the autopilot, and I think it must have taken her off course, as happened once or twice during the record – but I wasn’t going fast enough this time to be warned of the change”—but what an extraordinary shame (and ‘nuts’ to the few cynics who think he did it for insurance!).



Ben Ellison

Ben Ellison

Panbo editor, publisher & chief bottlewasher from 4/2005 until 8/2018, and now pleased to have Ben Stein as a very able publisher, webmaster, and editing colleague. Please don't regard him as an "expert"; he's getting quite old and thinks that "fadiddling fumble-putz" is a more accurate description.

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