What tools do sailboats have to avoid collisions at sea?

Soon a week since the Transat Jacques-Vabre boats left Le Havre with the objective of reaching Fort-de-France (Martinique) as quickly as possible. Most of the competitors are leaving the European coasts, the first have even passed the Canary Islands archipelago. Beyond the weather conditions (including the famous doldrums), the skippers are well aware that the major risk of sailing at full speed in the North Atlantic is linked to collisions. Especially on board a foiler capable of handling 40 knots of speed (70 km / h).

“You have to keep in mind in this part of the world that you are not really alone on the water,” explains Thomas Rettant, currently at the head of the Imoca category on LinkedOut. There is a lot of maritime traffic, cargo ships, a lot of fishing, whether along the Spanish or Portuguese coasts, or even along Mauritania. We must be extremely vigilant. We all had a little hot times. It has nothing to do with the great south where, there, you may not meet anyone for days. “” In the Atlantic, we can be scared, confirms Morgan Lagravière, the coskipper of LinkedOut. Fortunately, we have tools to help us. “

AIS, radar, cameras …

To avoid an accident or a dangerous maneuver, the vast majority of boats are indeed equipped with an automatic identification system, called AIS, allowing them to find their way from a distance. “It’s a positioning system on which we have feedback on our on-board computer. We see on screen information on the profile of the vessel, its course, its speed. I can associate alarms with it, especially at night. If, for example, I get too close, I have an alarm that will go off. With that we are relatively quiet today. But you have to be careful along the coasts because there are fishermen who are not equipped with this type of tool. We also have some who have it but do not plug it in. “

To ensure the blow, the sailboat LinkedOut also has a radar, a camera at the masthead, and a thermal camera. Thanks to the latter one “can clearly distinguish hot spots, like an engine, it is very practical”.

But it’s not just boats that pose a potential danger. Less visible, unidentified floating objects (Ofni) are particularly numerous in the North Atlantic. “As soon as the sea is a little rough, everything that floats on the surface is invisible. It can do a lot of damage quickly. We think of logs, drifting buoys, containers… We don’t really know how to avoid them. Cameras have made great strides, but they have their limits. This is a real problem in ocean racing. Fortunately, it’s easier when there are two of us on board, like in a Transat, than in a solo race like the Vendée Globe. “

A pinger to try to keep cetaceans away

The problem is similar with marine animals, cetaceans in particular. “The risk of collision is increasing due to the increasing speed of racing yachts. For cetaceans, we have a pinger in the front: it is an element which emits ultrasound underwater and which is supposed to make them react and move away. But we must admit that it is not miraculous. Sometimes we hit and, again, the damage to the boat can be significant. There is also the risk of injuring the fish, which never makes us happy. “

If they manage to cross the Atlantic without incident, the competitors of the Jacques-Vabre, slightly behind forecasts for the moment, are expected from the beginning of next week in Martinique. The Imoca, star boats of the last Vendée Globe, could arrive from Wednesday.