Family of four’s Outremer 45 faces eastern Pacific emergency

Three waves and a snapped shroud turned Lady Blue’s Pacific passage into a mast-loss emergency, but the Fortebos family kept the Outremer 45 afloat and moving toward the Galápagos. For Alexandre, Julie, Rosalie and Lucien Fortebos, the moment stripped the cruise down to seamanship basics: secure the boat, protect the hulls, and get to shelter.

The family had not set out on a casual holiday. They sold their apartment and chose to live aboard a multihull built for serious voyaging, settling on an Outremer 45 because of its speed, seaworthiness and sailing feel. Outremer describes the 48-foot catamaran as a blue-water cruiser designed for ocean or coastal passages and easy to handle with a small crew, even single-handed. The model has become a familiar name in offshore circles, with more than 100 boats currently sailing around the world.

Lady Blue was in the Eastern Pacific, between Panama and the Galápagos, with the Gambier Islands still ahead, when the situation escalated. Three waves struck the boat, a shroud failed, the mast began to wobble and then fell to port, taking the boom and sails with it. What followed mattered as much as the failure itself. The crew stayed composed, focused on keeping the rig from damaging a hull or the structure, and motored toward safety with the boat still afloat.

That last part is the lesson family cruisers on multihulls should take seriously. The Panama-to-Galápagos leg is widely treated as an offshore passage, not a coastal hop, because the route crosses the ITCZ and often brings variable winds, currents and long motoring stretches. A dismasting there is more than a rigging problem. It becomes a navigation problem, a boat-handling problem and a contingency-planning problem all at once. Private yachts heading for the Galápagos also need the right entry authorization and paperwork before arrival, which means the margin for improvisation is thin even after the emergency is over.

Lady Blue ultimately reached the Galápagos about 200 nautical miles after losing her mast. For an Outremer 45 carrying a family of four across oceans, the episode was a hard reminder that a well-found catamaran still depends on inspection, preparation and quick decisions when the sea tests every weak point at once.