Looks like they dismasted in the southern ocean. The pictures look pretty nasty. They already rigged a temporary mast using the boom to limp to port - 2000 miles away, still pushing 8 knots though. All the crew is safe.
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I bought a copy of Ellen's book while we were in London this past December. The American edition will not be published until March. I'm glad I have the original British version because the american edition will have had the British-ism's edited-out. The dismasting is even more heartbreaking having become more knowledgeable about Ellen from her own words.
Before her first triumphs she was shunned and quietly ignored by the club racing crowd and that is one big reason she moved to single handed events. The clubs, for her, were too much yelling during races and too much navigation of social cliques while onshore. Next time you're in a yacht club you might want to look around and give a young wallflower a beer and a chat. One day, she may end up on the horizon with sponsorship taking her way beyond the club course.
The most important thing imparted from her book is that you have to pick yourself up, dust off, and keep on going. She is a model of incredible stamina and resilence.
Jury rig that boom on the mast step.
A donf!
After what she did single handed around the world, I have a tremendous amount of respect for her.
Although, I did think that they didn't test KF2 enough. Seems that the sea trials were hastily done in an effort to not fall behind geronimo to far.
One thing that was an eye opener while reading the book is that landing sponsorship, putting together a crew, logistics planning for the boat, crew, shore support and the bazillion details to make a race effort happen is an excercise in sleep deprivation and stress management for Ellen and her support organization in order to make it to the start line. Testing may suffer as a result but carbon fibre still breaks at unpredictable places and moments.
K2, nee "Orange", had the mast step problem on it's last record setting circumnavigation and they seem to have fixed that but the massive carbon mast construction still has some mysterious gremlins that are hard to define and delete on all the big ocean boats both multi and monohull.