On the night between Saturday and Sunday, Ambrogio finally reached land, after two days of solo sailing with a bruised rib cage. Meanwhile the team had been working on the arrival of "Allagrande Mapei", expected around 02:00 UTC on Sunday 8 November. The forecast was for 25 to 30 knots of wind and a building sea. Since Bogi would not be able to handle the boat, the team had to work out how to get on board to slow her down, drop the sails and finally reach the buoy.
The port of Horta provided a larger RIB to go out and meet Bogi, while the famous Couscous lent a smaller one for manoeuvres inside the harbour. In the Azores, a lovely sense of solidarity has grown between the locals and the ocean racing teams: besides Allagrande Mapei, the team of the Ocean Fifty "Lazare", whose skipper had to retire through injury, is here too, as is the team of the Ocean Fifty "Elvest", which capsized off the Azores and has since been righted and towed to Horta.
At 00:30 local time the team set off in the port’s big RIB: the goal was to reach the boat and get at least one of the five on board, even though she was still moving. Once aboard, that person was able to bring "Allagrande Mapei" to a stop so that two other team members could climb on. They then sailed the boat to the port of Horta and dropped the sails. The port had made a buoy available in the outer harbour, but the team preferred to drop anchor, judging it the safer option.
Waiting for them on another boat was a rescue team, who came aboard and took charge of Ambrogio. They put him on a stretcher to transfer him to their boat, then into an ambulance and finally to hospital.
Meanwhile, with weather conditions far from favourable, the team organised night watches on board the IMOCA, so as not to leave the boat unattended and to keep her under control.
At around 06:30 local time, Bogi left hospital with good news: the tests had ruled out any fractures. He does, however, have a severe rib contusion. The impact caused heavy inflammation of the muscles and tissues around the ribs, which is extremely painful. Because this area moves with every breath, it hurts a lot every time he moves or tries to breathe deeply.
Since then Ambrogio has been getting by on painkillers, but it isn’t easy. Psychologically, of course, retiring from the Route du Rhum has hit him hard. For a sailor, falling on your own boat is absurd, he says. It’s serious, it shouldn’t happen. And he is finding it hard to forgive himself.
Especially since, despite the gap to Corentin that had built up during the race, he still felt well placed for what lay ahead and confident he could get a good result. But, as he reminded us himself, Florence Arthaud needed four attempts before she won the Route du Rhum. There’s still a bit of time!
Here are Bogi’s words:
Of course I wanted to thank everyone for the huge number of messages I received. When I turned on my personal phone I had more than a thousand messages, it was incredible. Thank you so much for all the support.
Until now the frustration hadn’t come out, because I was more focused on getting to the Azores and ending these two days of torture with these slightly battered ribs. But now that everything is fine, in the sense that I’m here and taking my medication, all the pain of having retired from a race I cared about so much, a race I gave everything to, is coming out. I had put in an amount of energy I’m proud of, but it wasn’t enough. So it’s still a pretty tough defeat. But anyway, we’ll start again from here next year. And we’ll be very hungry.
So, let’s talk a bit about the race. For as long as it lasted, the race lived up to its name, so very intense, like every Route du Rhum. Even though we started downwind… in the end downwind is almost a more intense point of sail than upwind, because the boat is doing 30 knots all the time, so it’s very tiring to live on board.
But my boat’s performance is fantastic. We worked incredibly hard all year, so we had a machine that was really… Maybe we were the favourites. If I’d had to choose the best boat to start this race with, it would have been ours. So that was already a small victory for the team. And you could see it in the first two days: I was leading, I was going faster, I had loads of confidence.
Then of course there was the front crossing, which was a very delicate moment, when I covered MACIF, which I saw as my direct rival, while I gave MACSF, which was a bit further back, a bit more freedom. And precisely because I went to cover MACIF, I found MACSF a bit ahead of me. And that small gap… those 5 miles became 300. I still find it hard to explain how it happened. But these are mistakes that can happen.
And anyway I was really happy with how I stayed focused on the race, because I kept a very clear head and kept putting every bit of energy I had into fighting for second place.
So I chose to go a bit north of the big low. My boat handles big waves really well, even in a messy sea, so I knew I could take that route, while the others would struggle more. So I attacked to the north. And that’s where the problems started.
First I broke the ballast tank and the water that came out caused a blackout. I got out of that too: I managed to fix the blackout, get going again and stay in the race. And despite everything, I could still fight for second place.
Then came the accident, which put things in a different light. But even then my head couldn’t make the step straight away. I stayed in the race, telling myself: "Well, I’ll bear away a bit now, slow down a bit, and maybe we’ll think about it again in 24 hours, to see if the pain goes away."
But six or seven hours after the accident, I realised I couldn’t turn a winch handle, not even in light wind. With another three or four days of sailing in strong wind ahead of me, carrying on was absolutely dangerous and senseless. I couldn’t fight for the podium any more and even just finishing wouldn’t have been easy. But above all, that didn’t interest me: we weren’t there just to finish a race, we were there to race it. Once I understood that wasn’t possible any more, I decided there was no point carrying on.
That’s when another race within the race began: getting to a port. Because I was alone on a boat that is still a crazy boat, with this serious injury. I was 580 miles from the Azores, so a bit more than two days of sailing. And you have to remember I can’t do any manoeuvre on my own with this pain. I managed to take the third reef, and it was an endless mission. From there, luckily, I was able to sail a course without many manoeuvres to Horta, where the team came on board and did the manoeuvre. I could never have done more than I did.
Once I got here, the maritime coordination centre and the Portuguese Navy rescuers stepped in, lifted me off the boat on a stretcher and took me to hospital by ambulance. X‑rays, an examination, lots of painkillers. And in the end, luckily, nothing is broken, but there’s a big contusion of the rib cage muscles. That’s why I struggle to breathe and to move. And without painkillers I can barely walk. So there you go. Now we’re here with the team in the Azores, waiting to find out when the boat will leave for the base in Lorient, while I’ll obviously fly home.
Lamberto Cesari
