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1990 Monaco Race with Stefano Casiraghi

Ratickle

Ratickle

Founding Member / Super Moderator
A comment in another thread moved me to start this thread about Stefano Casiraghi's death in 1990.

The comment, referring to a 38' restored Cougar race cat.

Offshore Ginger said:
And what a piss poor design that was considering Prince ....whoever.....died after stuffing the boat ( with a broken neck ).......but i could be wrong ................
Click to expand...
http://seriousoffshore.com/forums/showthread.php?t=23060

So, because some of you may not recall that day, I'll try to start a reasonable discussion about a tragic death that should not be trivialized.
 
Royal Tragedy in Monaco : Husband of Caroline Dies in Boat Crash

October 03, 1990|From Associated Press

MONTE CARLO, Monaco — Tragedy revisited Monaco's royal family today as Stefano Casiraghi, the 30-year-old husband of Princess Caroline, was killed when his speedboat flipped while he was defending his title in a world championship race, the Royal Palace said.

Caroline, 33, was in Paris when she learned of the death of her Italian financier husband. She quickly left for Monaco, wearing black mourning clothes.

It was the second tragedy to strike the Grimaldi family in eight years--Caroline's mother, Princess Grace, died after a car crash in 1982.

Witnesses said Casiraghi and co-pilot Patrice Innocenti drove their catamaran, the Pinot di Pinot, straight into a wave at 93 m.p.h. during a morning run for the World Offshore Championships.

The 42-foot boat flipped, ejecting Innocenti. But witnesses said Casiraghi remained strapped to his seat and bore the full impact of the vessel slamming into the water.

The two-engine, five-ton boat sank with Casiraghi aboard, witnesses said.

"He surely didn't have time to look out and, at that speed, stuck under the boat, must have been killed by the blow," said another competitor, Michel Karsten.

Emergency crews pulled both men from the water and rushed them to Princess Grace Hospital.

The hospital said Innocenti was being treated for his injuries.

Today's accident is the worst blow to Monaco's ruling family since Princess Grace, the American actress who gave up Hollywood to marry Prince Rainier III, died in 1982. Caroline's younger sister, Princess Stephanie, also was injured in the car crash.

http://articles.latimes.com/1990-10-03/news/mn-1617_1_boat-crash
 
From Wiki

A self-styled "throttle man," Casiraghi participated in eighty offshore races during his lifetime. Over a 20-year career, he won a dozen of those competitions and, at the time of his death, was the world champion of offshore speedboat racing, including the World Championship held off the coast of Atlantic City in 1989. Casiraghi had set the record (since broken) for 172 mph on Lake Como in 1984. It is a very dangerous sport, but as Casiraghi once said, "There are more dangerous sports and I believe one should live life to the fullest."

Casiraghi was killed in an offshore powerboat racing accident off the coast of Monaco near Cap Ferrat on 3 October 1990 while defending his world offshore title. He was 30 years old and had planned to retire after the race. Only weeks earlier, he had escaped death when his boat blew up off the coast of Guernsey.

There were three to four-foot wave conditions on the race course, which caused Casiraghi's 42-foot catamaran, Pinot di Pinot, to flip. Traveling at plus-90 mph, it did not have a full canopy, and experts who studied the accident have said that Casiraghi would most likely have survived the accident had the boat been equipped with such a canopy. As a result of his death, safety laws became more stringent; a safety harness and closed hull became compulsory, as was a twin hull design for boats. Races nowadays take place close to the harbor where waves are gentler, which is policed off for safety reasons as boats are no longer allowed to drive near the course.

Casiraghi's copilot, Patrice Innocenti, survived the accident. He was pulled from the water and taken to Monaco's Princess Grace Hospital.

The funeral Mass was held in Monaco's Cathedral of St. Nicholas exactly eight years after Princess Grace's funeral in the same place.

Stefano Casiraghi is buried in the Chapelle de la Paix in Monaco, which is also the resting place of his wife's paternal grandfather, Prince Pierre of Monaco.
 
There is also footage of the race where he passed, and discussion about the accident in this documentary, if you haven't seen it, it is a pretty good one...

 
I was at the event, filming for a client "Advanced Pacific" - First race went off as scheduled, however the second race - our pilot from the UK - unfortunately popped the floats on your Jet Ranger - with the floats inflated, it would limit our speed - so no choice but to not film the 2nd race - the city shut down after his death - we were told we could not even film any boats or start them, so the team I was filming for, towed their boat offshore - and we filmed it there ! A sad day for all !

Phil
 
Ratickle said:
A comment in another thread moved me to start this thread about Stefano Casiraghi's death in 1990.

The comment, referring to a 38' restored Cougar race cat.

http://seriousoffshore.com/forums/showthread.php?t=23060

So, because some of you may not recall that day, I'll try to start a reasonable discussion about a tragic death that should not be trivialized.
Click to expand...
Paul , when i say Piss poor design i mean ..........................that there should have been a little more thought put into the cockpit design for safety reasons alone maybe a canopy leaving the driver & throttleman more protected although in the past i have worked on boats where the driver has messed with an F-16 fighter canopy which in the end resulted in tragedy because the driver had claustrophobia .
 
That makes more sense. I guess there will always be open race boats in offshore. The cockpit design in open boats may be more important than in canopied boats.
 
Paul the bottom line is ................doing triple digits in any boat can be very serious no matter if it is.................... an open cockpit or .................. a canopied boat. Paul , just curious have you ever been in a boat doing triple digits or faster , ( open cockpit ) and looked at the face or skin of the person next to you ?
 

Yachting; Powerboat Racers Ponder the Risks

By BARBARA LLOYD
Published: October 14, 1990

Competitors on 35 offshore powerboat teams are feeling a heightened sense of danger today as they prepare for the national championship in Marathon, Fla. Their uneasiness stems from the death two weeks ago of Stephano Casiraghi, husband of Princess Caroline of Monaco, who was killed while racing a 42-foot powerboat on the Mediterranean Sea.

''It's in everybody's mind; it's fresh,'' said John Carbonell, executive director of the Offshore Professional Tour, last week. ''Usually when you're out there racing, you concentrate on what's happening. But I'm sure this is going to affect people in different ways.''

Many of the United States powerboaters had raced against Casiraghi in 1989 when he won the Open Class world championship in Atlantic City. Fatalities in offshore powerboat racing are not uncommon. In the last decade, 12 people have died.

Potential for Danger

Most competitors take a fatalistic approach to the sport. ''The potential for getting hurt is out there all the time,'' Carbonell said. ''If it's going to happen, it's going to happen, whether if it's in a race boat, or a car, or walking across the street.''

Others, such as the movie actor and former world powerboat champion, Don Johnson, say the risks are part of getting the most out of life. ''It's an expression of living,'' Johnson has said.

Dr. Matthew Houghton, medical adviser for the offshore racing circuit, said last week that Casiraghi reportedly was not wearing a safety harness, nor was he protected by a capsule - a clear, plastic cockpit enclosure like those in fighter jets. ''Anytime anyone dies, it focuses outsiders on those things that are so paramount to the safety of our sport,'' Houghton said.

The death in 1986 of the veteran offshore racer, Mark Lavin of West Palm Beach, Fla., triggered an intense effort by the American Power Boat Association to promote safety. While few of the ensuing innovations - such as five-point safety harnesses - became mandatory, many competitors complied with the new recommendations.

Two-Fold Test

The Bud Dry Marathon Offshore Challenge starts at noon today in Marathon, a coastal community in the Florida Keys. The championship race is apt to test both driver and boat. John Gehret of Wayne, Pa., the points leader going into the race, said last week that the course is tricky.

It parallels Seven Mile Bridge for three miles, then turns left and heads through a series of bridges to the southeast, and back. Gehret said that the bridges protect the water in one area from the open ocean. But the competitors have to run their boats on both sides -in potentially rough water as well as calm water.

Roughing the Waters

''If you're in a rough-water race, you're used to it being that way,'' said the 33-year-old Gehret. ''But it's difficult to decide how slow to go when you're coming into rough water from a calm area at 100 miles an hour.'' Gehret concedes that he is edgy over Casiraghi's accident. ''It's affected me a lot,'' he said, ''more than I want to say.''

As owner and driver of the 47-foot Superboat INXS, Gehret wears a safety harness. His boat, which is built with a single vee-shaped hull rather than the catamaran configuration of Casiraghi's multihull, has no capsule. Gehret maintains that he doesn't need a capsule since the vee-shaped design is far less likely to flip over than a twin-hulled craft.

Hard on INXS's stern for the national Superboat title is Popeyes/diet Coke, a 50-foot catamaran driven by Chuck Norris, the movie actor. Gehret must finish right behind Norris, or beat him, to claim the 1990 circuit title. Norris won the Offshore Professional Tour's race in New York City last August, beating Johnson, a personal rival. Both Johnson and Norris drive boats with capsule protection.

Johnson's 50-foot catamaran, Team U.S.A., broke down in the New York race after setting a lap record of 127.3 m.p.h. The engine failure moved him to a ninth-place finish, and to fourth overall behind Gehret, Norris and Pete Markey of Farmington Hills, Mich., driver of the 47-foot vee-boat, Little Caesars Pizza.

The powerboats range from 24-50 feet, and are divided into four classes. The largest craft, the Superboats and Open Class boats, will race 147 miles in ten laps; the course for the smaller Pro I and II boats is 105 miles. Abracadabra, a yacht owned by Jim Andrews of Birmingham, Ala., and skippered by John Kolius of Darien, Conn., won the International 50-Foot World Cup regatta last week in Newport, R.I. The boat, designed by John Reichel and Jim Pugh of San Diego, won five of the seven races sailed.

http://www.nytimes.com/1990/10/14/sports/yachting-powerboat-racers-ponder-the-risks.html
 
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