When something unexpected happens so often the rumor mill heads into action with some mumbles more believable than others and some even heading towards the conspiracy theory pile.
However, with the sudden loss of the almost brand new Infinity 52, Tuletikku on passage from Cascais in Portugal to Gosport in the UK, theories are already springing up. It was reported she went from 8kts to zero in pretty short order and already there have been discussions in the forums regarding just what they hit. And what part of the boat hit.
I have been assured from a reliable source that it most definitely wasn’t the DSS foil that hit anything so what else could have caused the ingress of water to be so dramatic that the vessel had to be abandoned?
One apparent possibility almost falls into the category of “The front fell off” if anyone remembers the spoof.
The sail-drive dropped out!
Now, whether it was that it just fell out, it hit something or the fact they had been slamming into waves for a few days loosened something is still not quite clear but the chatter is that is the latter that happened. The crew are very tight-lipped, (voluntarily or NDA is uncertain at this stage), lawyers are likely to be involved, not least those of the insurers and sadly this could end up very messy indeed.
One can’t help feeling sorry for the boat’s owner who only a couple of weeks ago was known to be absolutely delighted with his new steed and is a sad end of the boat’s short and promising career.
The source of this information is both knowledgeable and reliable – no, I won’t say who, what or where but if correct it would be sad if the DSS concept – which clearly works – was besmirched by poor engineering somewhere else in the boat or perhaps even as simple as a few nuts not properly tightened, torqued or otherwise secured.
It should at this stage be remembered however that assuming this was the cause of the sinking will be dependent on crew statements as it is unlikely to be proven 100% one way or the other as the hard evidence is multiple fathoms down somewhere in the Bay of Biscay and given that a week of searching on the surface didn’t find her the chance of finding her on the bottom must be considered highly unlikely. – SS.
