Dismasted in Global Solo Challenge

It was during the night between December 21 and 22 of the Global Solo Challenge occurred when Ari Känsäkoski (FIN) on his Class40 ZEROchallenge was shocked to see that one of the lower diagonal shrouds, the D1, had broken, with the lower pressed head shearing off at the tip-cup.

Känsäkoski immediately lowered all sails hoping to be able to secure the mast at first light and even, perhaps, manage a makeshift Dyneema replacement D1 to allow him to sail on to Australia. However, a squally front was headed his way and despite winds of just around 20 knots, the boat under bare poles rolled violently enough to cause the unsupported mast to break in half in the depth of night.

Känsäkoski was in an area of the Indian Ocean, just north of the Crozet Islands which is affected by a strong flow of the countercurrent of Agulhas which can cause the sea state to be far worse than it would normally be for any given wind strength.

The deck-stepped mast buckled in half, breaking just above the first set of spreaders. Without injury and damage to the hull, he then proceeded to secure the mast against the boat during the night to ensure it could not cause a waterway by hitting the hull in the rolling waves. When daylight came, he determined that he did not require assistance could build a jury rig.

At the time of the accident, Känsäkoski was more than 1000 nautical miles south of Madagascar, 1600 miles from Cape Town, and over 3000 miles from Western Australia. The Crozet Islands were around 300 miles to his south, but as the main island, l’Île de la Possession, offers little more than a bay for anchorage, that option was eliminated.

As the Agulhas countercurrent was flowing at over three knots from the northwest, exactly where he wanted to go, Känsäkoski set course at 90 degrees to the current and took over two days to cross what in fact is a 50 miles wide river of hot water running against him in the middle of nowhere.

By Christmas eve, he had gotten through the worst of the countercurrent and had managed to hoist a small sail onto his whisker pole whilst considering options for hoisting further canvas. By December 26, he was out of the countercurrent and had reached a favorable eddy to the north.

With a depression of 30 from the north in the forecast, Känsäkoski hoped that by the evening of the 27th, both the warm and cold fronts should go through bringing southwesterly and even southerly winds to him make way to the north.

He will have to try not to lose any ground in the northerly winds between the 26th and 27th, especially making sure he is not blown back in the Agulhas countercurrent. He may resort to using a sail in the water as a sea anchor, hoping that the northerly eddie he is currently within will prevent him from drifting too far south with the wind.

After the cold front, Känsäkoski will have to try to make the most of the south westerly and southerly winds to go as far north as possible. Above approximately 35 degrees south of latitude, the prevailing surface currents and winds tend in fact to be favorable to sail towards Cape Town, out of the influence of the low pressure systems to the south that characterize the Roaring Forties.

However, several other options are being considered including the possibility of further fuel being dropped by passing ships but he probably needs to gain further mileage to the north as the area he is in now is still below the belt of commercial traffic.

Attrition List:
DNS: Peter Bourke – Class40, Imagine
DNS: Ivan Dimov – Endur37, Blue Ibis
DNS: Curt Morlock – IMOCA, 6 Lazy K
DNS: Volkan Kaan Yemlihaoğlu – Open 70, Black Betty

RTD: Juan Merediz – Class40, Sorolla
RTD: Dafydd Hughes – S&S 34, Bendigedig
RTD: Ari Känsäkoski – Class40, ZEROchallenge

Race details – Entry list – Start times – Tracking

The inaugural Global Solo Challenge 2023-24 seeks to be a budget-friendly solo, non-stop race around the world. Using a pursuit format for the 2023-24 race, 20 entrants from 34 to 70 feet have start times between August 26 to January 6 from A Coruña, Spain, with the first boat to return deemed the winner.

Source: GSC