There is a big rock here!

Transcript: The helmsman said "Check this out". Then someone climbed up to windward and said "What is it"? Then silence and then booom. Then someone climbed back down and looked to leeward: "There's a big rock here.

I'd say game over. Insert coin.

OMG what a nightmare. They won't forget that crash the first few days. Probably never. Also they'll probably never again forget to zoom in and check the course on the chart. Have a look at Captain JP's experience with electronic charts.

So it was visible after all. I guess a simple lookout with binoculars could have saved them. Pretty low tech standard equipment when I go night-sailing. Even works without batteries.

Video of the crash here. Hefty stuff that.

Major who?

Sailing Anarchy has received a letter about the Team Vestas Incident. It says what everyone else has refrained from saying till now: It was a fuck-up of the highest magnitude.

Major F*ckup

Read about it here: Letter to Saling Anarchy.

Daylight? Currently the sun sets at 1837 near Mauritius. They reported the crash at 1510UTC. As far as I can figure, Mauritius is UTC+4. Assuming they didn't report the crash immediately, they would have crashed less than a half hour after sunset. Meaning: It wasn't even dark. Scroll down for details and photos.

So we're looking at a pretty well known set of islands. It's around sunset. There is a lighthouse. There are houses and trees. Obviously the navigation failed somehow. The lookout also failed. How about the standard precaution when sailing in unknown waters: Depth alert!?