Big Breeze, Small Errors, Big Crash

[VinceSail]

Joe Woods and Red were having a good regatta on San Francisco Bay, when one small error, a round up while setting the chute in Race 6 of the 2010 Melges Worlds, led to disaster. Red continued on immediately after the crash but retired when damage to the boat and an injured crewman made continuing to race unsustainable.

A full regatta video will follow shortly on the VinceSail Channel.

[Ballard Sailor]

Great vid, you couldn't see it on the Sailgroove very well, much better angle here. Looks like Red could have used some weight back early eh?

[J30 Dell Todd]

quite awful

[Ballard Sailor]

bronco is soooo lucky the pole hit direct and released!

[familysailor]

Thanks for the video---- great catch.
Wish I could slow it down. You can see the pole impact followed by a slide toward the rudder, big bend and the lucky retraction. It seems to hang on the rudder cassette. Is that where the water was coming in, or was there an actual hole in the hull?

[buster_hymen]

Nice work Vince!

And go Bears!

[Sanity Check]

bronco is soooo lucky the pole hit direct and released!

I wonder if the pole didn't act somewhat like a shock absorber. Scary!

[Ballard Sailor]

Didn't I see written somewhere that Red headed in to Haul out soon after this?

[familysailor]

Yeah.
They were towed to KKMI in Sausalito from what I read. Seems as if KKMI Richmond would be closer as the crow flies, but maybe not if they zipped through Raccoon Strait getting more wind protection from Angel Island on the way.......

[Release the Kraken]

Wow, Pressure Drop rocks. SOOO glad to find an alternative to the *other* site. My first post

VinceSail or anyone who knows him: would you be so kind to let us know if it's possible to view your fantastic work from the M32 Worlds? It's a pleasure to see properly stabilized HD video from this event. I would love to ditch Sailgroove and watch video done the right way. The crash vid appears to be the only one posted from the regatta on YouTube so far. Any way to watch some more, pretty please?

*Hoping this is possible*

There's only a few seconds of video here but already I'm encouraged by the absence of the lame commentary we must suffer though from the other video feeds out there, AND a focus on one boat's maneuvers instead of the crappy "watch them all go past the mark" the other guys focus on. MAN I would love to see what individual boats are doing, in HD, without gay commentary and without the camera bouncing all over fuck.

[Slackwater_SF]

quite awful

Trust the injury to one crew was ... (anybody know?).

Agree, awful sad for the boats. Breeze and close quarters makes for, ... , one sailor's analogy is "wheel to wheel racing". The Berkeley Circle chop throws a bow or stern one way or another and it's mush.

It is sad to see boats touch (crash) at that speed; everybody likes their boat.

[Buzz Light Beer]

Impressive!
Can we have some more?