On November 6, Armel Le Cleac'h would capsize again with his maxi-trimaran Banque Populaire IX. The boat has just been repatriated by a tugboat to Vigo. In pieces. Fully dislocated, it can not be repaired. Fatal Route du Rhum for him.
"Despite all our efforts, with the storm, the boat is completely dislocated and in this state its reconstruction is impossible. " Death in the soul, Ronan Lucas, the director of Team Banque Populaire is the sentence: the Ultim class trimaran, skippered by Armel Le Cleac'h, is good for the trash.
On November 6, two days after the start of the Route du Rhum, the boat, which sailed in second position, capsized. Presumably after breaking his float in the wind, in a chaotic sea and a strong wind but nothing insurmountable.
As soon as the known sea fortune, a mission of recovery of the elements of maxi-trimaran of 32m was put in place by the team on the ground. The location of the boat was made possible thanks to the Argos beacon.
For example, a ship arrived in the area a few days after the incident, led by skipper Nantes Adrien Hardy, specialized in this type of operation and commissioned by insurance because of his expertise in the field, in an attempt to bring back on the ground what was possible to save.
After ten days at sea in difficult weather conditions, the tug arrived in Vigo (Spain). The first observations allowed Team Banque Populaire, who arrived on the spot, to observe that the boat had deteriorated badly. Expertise will now be able to begin, led by the insurer, and the shipowner who no longer has any illusion must now find how to bounce on the water, a few months from the thirtieth anniversary of his commitment to sailing.
This is the second time the boat capsized this year. The first, in April during a training in the Mediterranean, had already cost five months of navigation to his skipper while the multihull was refitted.