Spare a thought for Jimmy Spithill this evening. Moments after stepping off the boat he was front and centre for the assembled media. Here's what he said about today.
"We had a mast failure, the mast broke and came down. Nobody was hurt and that's the most important part. The crew are all safe and all of our support boats and contingencies that are built into the programme really showed today. I just commend the crew and all our support boats for swinging into action. Everyone is back on shore safe and we'll roll on forwards...
"The weather was actually quite nice. It was relatively light wind speeds and the sea state was quite flat. So until we delve into it and dig deep into our analysis tools, we don't know what the cause of the failure was...
"The real (sign of) heart in a team is the team that can come back from setbacks. This is a small setback but I have no doubt the team will bounce back… I'm sure we'll be fine for the race (in February)."
Within minutes of the boat reaching the dock, the sails and boom were being craned off. This day isn't over by a long shot. You can bet the team will be running the numbers overnight and into tomorrow to find out exactly what happened.
We'll have more from San Diego tomorrow.
(Here, the local TV station reports from near the team base in San Diego).
"We had a mast failure, the mast broke and came down. Nobody was hurt and that's the most important part. The crew are all safe and all of our support boats and contingencies that are built into the programme really showed today. I just commend the crew and all our support boats for swinging into action. Everyone is back on shore safe and we'll roll on forwards...
"The weather was actually quite nice. It was relatively light wind speeds and the sea state was quite flat. So until we delve into it and dig deep into our analysis tools, we don't know what the cause of the failure was...
"The real (sign of) heart in a team is the team that can come back from setbacks. This is a small setback but I have no doubt the team will bounce back… I'm sure we'll be fine for the race (in February)."
We'll have more from San Diego tomorrow.
(Here, the local TV station reports from near the team base in San Diego).
