The 2025 edition of the CIC Normandy Channel Race was marked by a rare incident: the collision between a container ship and the Class40 NST-Cabinet Z, which was cut in two before its skippers, Thomas Jourdren and Cédric de Kervenoaël, were rescued by helicopter. Tip & Shaft looks back at the sequence of events.
Night of 27 to 28 May. The fleet of the CIC Normandy Channel Race, whose course had been modified to avoid too much wind in the Celtic Sea, rounded the Occidentale de Sein before setting course for the Fastnet. Now in 12th position, NST-Cabinet Z is sailing south along the Ushant DST, making 16-18 knots in 25 knots of SW’ly and around 3 metres of seas. The Class40 led by Thomas Jourdren and Cédric de Kervenoaël is about to cross the track of the rail coming down from Ushant (see tracking); the former is in the cockpit, the latter inside taking a rest.
Thomas Jourdren tells us what happened next: “On the AIS, I saw a cargo ship arriving from the north [Ital Bonny, bound for Piraeus from Antwerp, editor’s note]. The theoretical route gives me a way ahead. To confirm this and to make sure he’d seen us, I contacted him, explaining that I was a racing sailboat and asked him if I could pass in front of him. It took him a while to reply, but he finally said he was OK and would change course. For my part, I’m constantly looking for him downwind to try and get a visual, but I can’t see him at any time.”
A few minutes later, the tone changes: “He calls me back and says I’m dishonest, that I’m not a sailing boat, he must think that because of our high speed.” Inside the boat, Cédric de Kervenoaël was worried: “I heard the caller say: ‘You’re not a sailing boat, you take me for a piece of shit’. I get up, ask Thomas what the problem is, because I understand that he hasn’t understood everything, so I get on the VHF to tell the ship that we’re very fast because we’re a racing boat.”
Jay Thompson’s testimonial
Jay Thompson, who was just behind with Pamela Lee aboard #Empowher, also picked up on this conversation, as he tells us: “I was on deck, Thomas was a mile ahead of us, a little downwind, and we could see the navigation light. I heard him call the cargo to ask if he could go ahead, and the ship said OK. Later, I heard the him say, in a very unkind and unprofessional way: “You need to give way, I’m the stand on vessel”. And very quickly, I realised that the navigation light had disappeared, as had the boat’s AIS, so I called Thomas on the VHF to find out if he was OK, but there was no answer.”
And with good reason, despite a last minute attempt by Thomas Jourdren to avoid the collision when he suddenly saw the large black mass bearing down on him, the cargo ship hit the Pogo S4 at 1:50 am, literally cutting it in two. “I could hear Thomas shouting: ‘It won’t go, it won’t go’, and then we got our heads smashed in,” sighs Cédric de Kervenoaël. Wasn’t there a way to avoid the collision, knowing that the crew were following the trajectory of the Italian ship on the AIS? “The AIS says we’re passing in front, and the guy tells us he’s changing course, but did he really do that? The investigation will tell“, replies Cédric de Kervenoaël. On our side, we have no reason to imagine what’s going to happen, I think we’ve taken every precaution. Everything went very quickly after the last contact on the VHF and visually, we couldn’t find him, I didn’t see a light, when he left either.”
The duo then had other things to worry about: saving themselves. Because the rear of the Class40, under the weight of the keel, was leaning forward and filling up with water. “I had the reflex to pick up the Epirb (distress beacon) on the way down and Cédric managed to grab the survival canister which, by chance, was floating next to us,” recounts Thomas Jourdren. In less than two minutes, we were up on the transom, I triggered the Epirb and sent out a mayday on the VHF.” This was immediately heard by Pamela Lee on board #Emphower, who immediately contacted Cross Corsen, which had just received the distress signal and informed the race directors, Miranda Merron and Pierre Hays.
Critical minutes
“We had confirmation from the competitor coming up behind that it was a real distress signal, so we carried out a fairly standard shipwreck recovery operation using a Navy H160 helicopter, which quickly took off,” confirms Pascal Blin, head of operations at the rescue centre. At this point, however, the aim is to try and recover the two shipwrecked crew on #Emphower, because the wreck is continuing to fill with water.
“The Cross told Pam that they were sending a helicopter but that it was going to take at least 40 minutes, so they wanted to see if we could try to rescue them, knowing that they didn’t have TPS,” explains Jay Thompson. But nothing went according to plan: “We tried to hit our raft so that we’d be ready to climb in if the situation got worse,” says Thomas Jourdren, “but it didn’t hit because the gas bottle wasn’t connected to the raft. Then they hit theirs, but the strap welded to the collar rips off”.
This was undoubtedly the worst moment for the four actors, as Jay Thompson confirms: “5-10 minutes before the helicopter arrived, I felt a change in the tone of Thomas’s voice on the VHF, he was starting to get really cold, so we were thinking with Pam how to try to attach our boat to their boat’s bow, which was clearer, and throw them a rope to get them back.” In the end, the two shipwrecked sailors held on and the helicopter arrived to pick them up at 4am, one after the other, to transport them to the Brest naval base before transferring them to Brest Hospital. The director of the CIC Normandy Channel Race, Manfred Ramspacher, then informed the families of the incident and of its happy outcome.
The cargo ship diverted
For their part, Thomas Jourdren and Cédric de Kervenoaël, after medical examinations, were interviewed in the morning by the maritime police. because as soon as the case became known, the latter informed the Brest prosecutor, who decided to open a judicial inquiry. The priority was to identify the cargo ship, a task entrusted to the Préfecture maritime de l’Atlantique, as confirmed by Alban Simon, its spokesman: “As this Italian vessel had been in contact with the yacht before the collision, it was asked to divert for legal purposes, at the same time we contacted the shipowner (Evergreen) to inform him, there was no opposition, either from the shipowner or the captain.”
Diverted to Saint-Nazaire, the Ital Bonny received a visit from the maritime police on Thursday 29 May, who seized all the onboard recordings and interviewed the captain and his first mate, who, according to Cédric de Kervenoaël, was at the controls when the collision occurred (the first was asleep). “The marine police also came to us on Wednesday morning, as the collision had taken place in our traffic surveillance zone,” explains Pascal Blin, for Cross Corsen, who at the same time coordinated the recovery of the wreck, carried out by Adrien Hardy (it arrived in Lorient). Their objective is to check whether we did what we were supposed to do and to recover the audio tapes of the operation, as they did afterwards on the cargo ship, which will give them all the bridge data, the ambient microphones, so they’ll have a good idea of what happened.”
The cargo ship was finally authorised to set sail again, which it did at the beginning of the week, arriving in Greece on Thursday. Thomas Jourdren, who was heard again on Wednesday by the police, and Cédric de Kervenoaël, who is suffering from four broken ribs, have lodged several complaints with the Saint-Pol-de-Léon judicial court. On what grounds? “Endangering the lives of others, unintentional assault and battery resulting in a temporary disability of less than three months, failure to comply with the rules governing surveillance at sea, destruction of the property of others and failure to assist persons in danger”, replies the second, a lawyer by profession. He added: “The complaints will no doubt be attached to the preliminary investigation by the Brest public prosecutor’s office, which will decide whether to open an investigation or to try the case directly in court, bearing in mind that there may be a question of territorial jurisdiction because the boat is flying the Italian flag.”
The rafts in question
Like Thomas Jourdren, Cédric de Kervenoaël was particularly shocked by the cargo ship’s silence when they launched their mayday: “Not only did they not try to come to our rescue, but they turned off their AIS as soon as they hit us, only to turn it back on the next day when the Préfecture maritime instructed them to divert.” The two men also emphasise the extent to which the World Sailing survival courses and the pre-race safety briefing helped them to remain calm and to take the right action despite the urgency of the situation.
As president of Class40, Cédric de Kervenoaël has finally decided to tackle the issue of liferafts head on: “It’s absolutely intolerable that some liferafts [the two were of the same make, Waypoint] don’t inflate or have handles that rip off when you want to pull them. We’re going to stop playing Russian roulette to save weight“, he asserts.
Before adding: “I’m holding a class board meeting tomorrow (Friday) at 4pm to decide between a one-design raft or approved types of raft to let the competition play out. I’m in the process of gathering all the documentation on weights and sizes, bearing in mind that we don’t have time to try them out, because we have races in three weeks’ time, the Massilia Cup Offshore and Les Sables-Horta. Perhaps given the timing, we’ll have to find a temporary solution, but it’s my responsibility as president not to let people set off on these races with Waypoint rafts.”
Photo : Préfecture Maritime de l’Atlantique
