'MAYDAY! MAYDAY! MAYDAY! THE BOAT IS CUT IN HALF'

A FULL-BORE COLLISION MID-CHANNEL LEFT A CLASS 40 SMASHED IN HALF AND ITS TWO SKIPPERS CLINGING TO WRECKAGE. HELEN FRETTER GETS THE FULL STORY

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“Mayday! Mayday! Mayday! The boat is cut in half.” The chilling call was heard across the Class 40 fleet on the night of 27 May off the coast of Ushant, northern France.

Thirty-one Class 40s started the CIC Normandy Channel Race on Sunday, 25 May, one of the first big races of the season. It had been a tough test from the outset, with 25 knots and a building forecast. By Tuesday there had been several retirements, including a collision between two boats on the start, a dismasting and gear failures. But the Class 40 is one of the most competitive fleets around - entries included Vendée Globe legends Michel Desjoyeaux and Vincent Riou, such is the level of experience.

The double-handed pairings had rounded the Isle of Wight, and were zigzagging their way across the English Channel and its tough tidal races. Jay Thompson, an American who has spent much of the last decade in France working with big IMOCA teams, was racing #Empowher with Irish co-skipper Pamela Lee. He recalls: "It was quite a hard race. We'd had 25-35 knots of upwind, basically the entire race. So everyone was really tired."

Faced with forecasts of 40+ knots in the Celtic Sea, race organisers had altered course to take the fleet back across the Ouessant Traffic Separation Scheme (TSS, or DST in French). This is common - the Class 40s, along with the Figaro and other classes, frequently race across the shipping areas, though the diversion meant this particular race would cross a TSS six times.

"We had just passed the most southern mark," Thompson continues. "We were going upwind, but slightly open. It was like a tight reach, about 80° or so true wind angle. At that time, there was 25 knots, pretty steady, with 28 knot gusts sometimes. So mostly everybody was sailing with a J1 and one reef in the main. We were on port tack, sailing north - basically to Fastnet, which was going to be our last mark before we came back to Caen, to finish.