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!?

Team Vestas grounded

Ok, explain me this: You start by taking a state of the art racing yacht. It might have had issues with assembly quality at first, but it is state of the art.

The VO65

Then you spend millions on sails and hire top notch sailors from all over the world. Back it all up with a global player in the wind industry and they follow a course like this:

Looking for an island to hit

It does not look like a GPS defect. It looks like I dunno what. Look at it! Why didn't the alarm bell ring? They aren't even close to missing it. They are hitting it head on ending up like this:

Grounded

I mean really. Really really. It is not like the island is secret base or unknown land or anything...

A well known island

It's Cargados Carajos. Named in 1506. Sixteen islands and numerous rocks at surface level. It's been there for ages. This is so embarrassing. So WTF happened?

Update 1: I've hit a rock a couple of times. Holiday sailing going at slow speed while looking to drop the anchor. It is not a nice experience. However, these guys were doing 19 knots at night in the middle of nowhere. OMG it must have been discomforting to say the least.

Just where is it?

Looks like they hit something east of Coco Island. Wikipedia puts that at 16° 50′ 0″ S, 59° 30′ 0″ E. Google maps shows the excact spot. Some say that older texts indicate these islands are about three miles further south-west. It is hard to imagine a state of the art racing machine sailing with old charts, no?

Update 2: This is a more detailed viev of just what they hit:

Details

Apparently there's a population there. Up north. Cruisers occasionally come to visit, and OMG there's even supposed to be a lighthouse on Ile du Sud; Very close to where they were grounded. I can't find a picture of Coco Island, but here's a shot of Ile Du Sud, where they are staying right now.

The barracks on Ile Du Sud

The lighthouse isn't very visible. Maybe it is not there anymore. BUT... Both the islands, the lighthouse and the reefs are on this screenshot from an electronic chart:

The lighthouse

Which means it has been charted accurately on modern navigation tools. Someone was there using electronic charts. So really... WTF happened here...