Thursday afternoon (March 30), while the team was sailing about seven nautical miles SW of the island of Ons (Pontevedra) near their home base in around 25 knots of wind and four meter high waves, the VO65 MAPFRE’s mast broke below the first spreader.
“There was a crash and then the rig started to fall to starboard,” explained Pablo Arrarte, MAPFRE’s watch captain who was sailing as skipper of the boat during this period of testing.
“We were sailing on quite a comfortable reach with waves also from the same direction and so at the moment we do not know why it has broken,” Arrarte continued. “We will have to analyse the data and the damaged parts in order to draw a conclusion.”
