Deadly flights
 

While in USA the cats mortally inserted them in the waves, in Europe other waves made to mortally fly. Always mortally unfortunately.
The first time happened in august 1987 during the Needles Trophy when the Colibrì of French Didier Pironi that was leading of the competition affront to all power some waves created by the wake of an oil-tanker that crossed the Channel.
According to the crews that followed, the boat it feathered decidedly with the bow toward the sky, completing a semicircle and it reverted in water upset and with the bow it turns verse who followed.
The boat was not to the time equipped of capsules or other systems of protection and the crew it was sat with belts.
The impact with the water was violent and Pironi, Bernard Giroux and Guenard died instantly.

The second serious accident happened around three years later, during the first phases of the second race to the World Championships that was hosted in 1990 to Montecarlo.
Stefano Casiraghi that had won the Title the year before in Atlantic City, was leading of the second race with his cat ,42' C&B Pinot di Pinot.
Just before the start the sea had rippled because of a strong wind that had begun to blow from earth.
Casiraghi had failed the first competition and he wanted to all the costs to do well in front of his public in this second race.
Made few miles Casiraghi was leading the group, when the boat feathered going completely out of the water, then in flight it turn reverting in water with the bow in the right verse but completely inverted.
In the flight the T-man Patrick Innocenti had the fortune of hurls out while Casiraghi remained trapped in his cockpit. The cat had two places, each for sponson and the man were sat with the belt. the place of Casiraghi, the steering, was to the left.
Also in this case the impact with the water was awful and Casiraghi dead practically instantly. The boat begins to sink and the divers succeeded in extracting the driver before it sank completely toward over 1000 meters of deep.
Innocenti had some serious wounds but it survived.
These two accidents had a dynamics very similar to cause of human errors as many similar.
And both the boats very fast and technologically advanced, a monohull and a cat, but they had obsolete and totally insecure cockpits.

I don't know how to correct the thread's title,however is Deadly FLIGHTS, not flies.

Plus of course there was the terrible loss of Alf Bontoft on board his Don Shead designed Enfield hull called Blitz during the 1976 Cowes Torquay race. There is footage on one of Graham's films. Here are some pictures. You can see the poor guy getting thrown out. As I recall no real improvements in safety resulted after this accident. The boat ran up the beach at Cowes and it was lucky more people didn't die. Bontoft's son Mike later bought the ex-Magoon KAM / I Like It Too, without any success unfortunately. I hear he's now in the US if I'm not mistaken.

Sad subject for sure. I have been at several racing events when tragedy has struck often in boats with the latest and greatest safety equipment.
Everybody is vulnerable to fall victim of a bad hop and should operate there boat accordingly.

This kind of things are always Sad...But sometimes these things still happen..

Similar to the Bontoft's accident in it initial dynamic was that of the Aussie Carr brothers in 1972 with one of the old The Cigarette that Don Aronow drove in the 1969.
No images about it but the two brothers was ejected from the boat after a wave faced badly.

Strange coincidence, but I was watching both the highlights of the P1 race from England this weekend and the highlights of the OSS Orange Beach race and after thinking about Carpentieri's crash and then watching Steve Curtis climb out the escape hatch of his MTI unscathed, I got to wondering why the UIM appears to have outlawwed full canopy boats in P1?

I must correct a pair of errors of mine;
The boat of Casiraghi was a FB Design and not a C&B and the two drivers they raced standing and not sat.

I took this shot about 5 minutes before they crashed I think - we were positioned just off the coast between Poole and Bournemouth and these guys were really running hard against Della Valle. What a dreadful day that was.