The wind was strong, blowing about 28 knots and gusting to 35, torrents of water repeatedly pelting the chests and faces of the five men on deck as PUMA closed within 1,100 miles of Galway. That boat revels in such conditions and had just taken the lead in leg seven, but then, as Craig Satterthwaite drove over and through the three-metre waves, the boat suddenly skidded off course.
The wipe out was not severe, but it had been accompanied by one of those noises that sailors instinctively recognise as something bad.
"We heard a big clunk," says Casey Smith, who was grinding the main sheet and joined on the watch by Satterthwaite, Rob Salthouse, Erle Williams and Ken Read, their skipper.
Down below, among the usual booming of the hull against waves and the groaning of strained ropes, the noise was clearer and louder.
"They thought we had broken the boom or the mast or something," Casey continues. "They reckoned they could hear a solid bang."
