Neal McDonald reports on Ericsson's keel let-go

by Neal McDonald, Ericsson Racing on 29 Nov 2005 From: ERICSSON RACING TEAM LEG ONE DAY 18
Sent: 29 November 2005

Free Willy!

One situation that I have always dreaded occurring is where the canting keel system has a failure that allows it to swing wildly on its own accord from side to side - a situation that on Ericsson has been named 'free Willy'. (Mainly because the massive lead bulb at the bottom of the keel looks like a killer whale).

Well last night, much to my horror, it happened to us. Willy was released. As seems to be the case in a large number of maritime disasters I've been involved in, yet again I was at the wheel. Also in common with most of these horror stories it was completely pitch black and between midnight and 2 am in the morning -1245 for us last night.

Reaching along at speeds of over 20 knots and quite pleased with ourselves as we felt at last conditions had allowed us to make a come back to the Brazilians, a pleasant evening’s sail quickly became a nightmare.

A massive bang took us all by surprise -'what the hell was that?' I slowed the boat down and quickly those on deck went into damage control action. Search for the damage and stop it getting worse. Torches flashed all over the decks and I could hear guys below, wakened by the noise, rapidly checking around down there. These situations are not uncommon in these boats and the boys know where to look. All the trouble spots were examined and after a short time we were none the better off for information about the source of the noise.

I had been running the boat square down wind to slow the boat down for our survey and decided as we could not find any damage we'd come back to course. Coming up on to a reach the boat simply heeled over out of control, practically capsizing!

Immediately we all knew what was wrong. For some reason our canting keel must be canted the wrong way. While some of the guys wrestled to get the sails down others went straight to the keel. 'We have a free Willy on our hands' I hear someone shout. Oh s----, now we’re in trouble I remember thinking.

With the sails down the boat came back under control. The keel was not thrashing around as widely as I worried it would. It appeared that something within the hydraulic system had failed and that the hydraulic fluid sloshing from one ram to another damped the keel movement sufficiently to keep the boat under a modicum of control. Richard Mason our keel system expert quickly and calmly work out a method of locking the keel off in one place, basically by hydraulically isolating and locking the rams in place.

With the initial danger over I breathe a sigh of relief, then of course comes the awful realization that we can no longer race the boat hard. Any hope of catching the Brazilians has gone. Devastating. The guys are mortified. I guess we should all be pleased we are in one piece and in reasonable shape to get to Cape Town, albeit slower than we'd like, but it’s hard to see it in that manner right now.

Once a race boat sailor always a race boat sailor, the competition is everything and right now it feels we have dropped out of the top runners on this leg. Just as well it's a long race of many parts!

Neal McDonald
Skipper