Drum (ship)
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The Drum is a maxi yacht that is now owned by Scottish billionaire Arnold Clark . It was constructed in 1984 for the Whitbread Round the World Race .
history
The yacht was originally planned for the British sailor Rob James by the well-known New Zealand yacht designer Ron Holland . James fell overboard and drowned while on a sailing voyage in 1983 before it was completed. Simon Le Bon , lead singer for Duran Duran , and two other people took over the half-finished boat and had it finished. Le Bon planned to take part in the Whitbread Round the World Race by boat.
Drum entered the Fastnet Race on August 10, 1985 as training and equipment testing for this race . The experienced ocean sailor Skip Novak was on board as skipper . The boat was still near the coast of Cormall when the skipper sitting below deck at the chart table suddenly heard a loud creak. At the same time the boat overturned. Due to a design flaw, the yacht lost its 14 tonne keel within seconds and overturned. That would normally have been the end of the ship and the crew. But due to several lucky coincidences, the ship did not sink and the crew survived. Six of the twenty-five crew members, including Le Bon himself, were trapped in the fuselage. Some of the others were able to save themselves on the upturned hull, others swam in the water and somehow managed to hold on to the ship.
The Drum's crew was unable to call for help. But the accident had been observed by the Carat , a participant in the Fastnet regatta. She immediately made an emergency call. Because a helicopter base was nearby, a helicopter from the British sea rescue organization RNLI came to the ship to provide assistance after only 10 minutes. The helicopter rappelled down a diver who freed the trapped. 20 crew members were rescued by the helicopter, the others by a Coastguard ship. Then the mast and the rest of the rigging were removed from the upturned boat and the boat was towed into the port of Megavissey .
Despite the accident, Le Bon and his crew wanted to take part in the planned Whitbread race. They managed to get the yacht back to sea in a month. To do this, a new keel had to be installed and the standing rigging and sails replaced. The yacht finished third in this race.
In 1988 Arnold Clark bought the yacht from Simon Le Bon in order to drive regattas himself. That same year, Drum hit the headlines again when she collided with a Royal Navy submarine about 5 miles from the Mull of Kintyre . In addition to participating in several regattas in Great Britain, Clark also sails with his family. Today the yacht can also be chartered .
In 2005, Arnold Clark gave the yacht to Simon Le Bon and the Fastnet crew from 1985, who wanted to take part in the Fastnet race again twenty years after the near-disaster. Because there was little wind, the race result was mediocre, but they were able to collect money with their performance. They donated this to the RNLI as thanks for the rescue twenty years earlier.
Web links
- About the Drum and Arnold Clark (English)
- TV reports about the dramatic rescue operation in the English Channel on YouTube (English)
- Article in Cruising World, December 1985. in Google Book Search
Footnotes
- ↑ Herb MacCormick: Fastnet 1985 , Cruising World p. 56, November 1985. in the Google book search
- ↑ Top 10 Volvo Ocean Race Moments . The Telegraph. March 9, 2012. Retrieved August 20, 2016.
- ^ Yacht Wreckage Examined . New York Times. August 13, 1985. Retrieved August 20, 2016.
- ↑ Auslan Cramb: sample after submarine collides with yacht . In: The Glasgow Herald , Newsquest Media Group , July 18, 1988. Retrieved December 30, 2018.