Sailing Irony

picture from Sailing AnarchySA (or should it be SI) posted a picture of Christophe Bouvet on Sirma in the 1600 mile Cap Istanbul 2008. The brief post mentioned the challenging conditions facing the single-handed sailors. The Figaro Beneteau class (sweet boats) typically has interesting races with a large number of boats for single-handed ocean racing. The Cap Istanbul has... had 29. That was until this weekend. Fortunately, the 29th competitor will follow the other sailors to the finish... just not on his boat.
The internet is great for sailors in general. It's especially nice in the off season and when you live in an area or country where the mainstream media thinks covering bicycle racing is an exotic sport... So, I click on the link to the Cap Istanbul and load the race viewer. It's the beginning of the 330nm, second leg from Cagliari, Sardinia to Marzamemi, Sicily. Not long into it, many boats (whose track is traced out by the viewer) dramatically change directions. Well, this is strange. Everything looks very disorganized... Okay, more disorganized than a yacht race should... and then organization returns but all the boats are heading back to Cagliari... What's up with that... I wondered.
The information was still coming in... but it was apparent that something happened to Christophe Bouvet. Another sailor noticed something wasn't right with Sirma, Bouvet's boat.
picture from capistanbul.comRacing in the dark, it wasn't clear what was going on.
Fortunately, everyone acted quickly to use the boats tracking information to identify where to search from the missing sailor. After being in the water for two hours, he was found and rescued by Paul Meilhat. Everyone returned to Cagliari and by now have restarted the leg to Marzamemi. Quite a story... Ironic that Sirma's picture was used for the SA post about the Cap Istanbul.

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