Rudder Attacks Shark

Carrying kelp on the keel is slow. Bags are bad too. But a shark? That’s what the doublehanded team of Mike Gascoyne and Brian Thompson had to clear from their Class 40 rudder Caterham Challenge during the Transat Jacques Vabre.

Here is their report after passing Cape Verde, at about the midpoint of the 5460 mile race from Le Havre, France to Itajai, Brazil…

“Around 3am Monday morning Brian noticed something caught around the starboard rudder. He called me on deck and we could see what looked like a piece of rubber or rope trailing 1m behind the rudder. I tried to free it but could not get hold of it so we decided to slow down the boat, snuff and drop the spinnaker and turn the boat into wind to stop it. Having done all this I went back to grab the obstruction to look straight into the head of a shark caught around the rudder. It was about 1.5m long and we had hit it in the middle and it had curved around the rudder. What we could see coming out of the water was its tail. We backed down and it fell off and we went on our way, don’t think the shark was so lucky.”