Goss' construction practices were not up to par and nomex core delaminated from the skin - bows off in first trials. Then they just got nailed hard. They forgot that the whole purpose of designing these things light and fast was to be able to sail around bad weather systems, rather than plunging into a mega storm in the Irish sea. The most the big cats got in the Race was around Cape Horn at 60 knots. Goss had seen much more than that when he had to abandon.
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<br>Fosset blew his wad early and did not have a clue on how to tune his boat right. Thin bows may work on A cat but suck in heavy ocean conditions. Installing 20 extra feet of real estate may have been smart (albeit very expensive) but putting an untried main for a Round the World race nicely offset that advantage. Result - out of the race by the time they reached the equator.
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<br>TA whacked their fwd crossbeam in the seas when trying to catch Dalton, the first instance of delamination. This is no different from what Dalton experienced when qualifying on his cat a year before, he just had time to fix it up and reinforce. On top of it, South African carbonologists did not do a good enough repair and Eric Goetz was called on in New Zealand to do the repair once over.
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<br>None of this relates to the misfortune of hitting someting when flying in the fog. We'll see the details tonight.
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<br>S.<br><br>