Not far off the Herreshoff Marine Museum pier, a forlorn vessel has been languishing on a mooring for about a month. Even if you have trouble with your distance vision, you can tell that there’s something not right about the way the boat is sitting in the water.

The boat is the Ultim Emotion 2, one of the very few Ultim trimarans commercially available in the world, “a true formula 1 of the seas,” according to the yacht brokerage that offers it for racing charters. At 80 feet long, she has the weight of a trimaran 2/3 her size, and can sail at a speed of more than 30 knots.

And sailing fast was exactly what she was doing when things went wrong on June 17, just a few hours after the start of the Newport to Bermuda race.

“The starboard aft crossbeam that attaches the smaller starboard hull (ama) to the main hull broke, and since the shrouds were attached to it, the mast went over the side,” said Bill Lynn, Director of the Herreshoff Marine Museum. “If you look closely, you can see that the starboard ama is only attached at the front end and is sort of hanging. It is here only because we had an available mooring where the boat could be left while the French owners figure out what to do with it. Tommy Gonzalez and Fast Forward Composites may end up doing some repair work on it.”

Crew member Bertrand Jasinski posted an account in Polish of the incident on the UltimBoat Facebook page, this is excerpted from the translation:

“When after two hours from the start in full fog 100m from the left board, we overtook Argo, which so far has always been better than us, we were convinced that nothing could stop us. We felt we had a chance to win the race and set a track record.

“The euphoria lasted for 150 miles. We covered this distance suddenly in 6.5 hours. 21-25 kts winds 10 miles ahead of Argo. Shot all of a sudden. The right posterior joint of the middle and right swimmer is breaking. Fatigue of the material. It's made up like a house of cards while detaching from the swimmer. The mast devoid of a backstab is placed on the left board. At the same time, the front joint of these swimmers is breaking. This is the end of the race for us. The most important thing is that nobody was hurt.

“The trimaran structure on the two floats is still safe and stable…150 miles left from shore at 900m depth. At the same time mayday, mayday by satellite phone because with mast we lost all antennas and radio.
“The ocean teaches humility.”

The damaged vessel would take 37 hours to limp back to Newport, accompanied by the U.S. Coast Guard for 27 of them in the event the boat became unsafe.