Ambrogio Beccaria felt it before he saw it. Allagrande Mapei had lost her rhythm, pace bleeding away into the grey waters north of Ireland, and when he checked the instruments he already had a fair idea why. A fishing trap had wrapped itself around the keel, its weight and drag turning his IMOCA into a sea anchor. Where another skipper might have reached for the radio or turned for the nearest harbour, Beccaria reached for a wetsuit instead, a decision that produced some of the most raw and extraordinary footage to come out of this year's Vendée Arctique.
He suited up methodically, pulling on fins and a mask, then tied himself to the cockpit rail before bringing the boat hove to for as much stability as he could manage. What followed was not a single heroic plunge but something harder and more grinding than that. He breathed, rolled into the black water, went down, surfaced gasping, and went down again. A net and buoy had wound themselves tight around the keel and were anchored to the seabed below, the tension immense. One dive was never going to be enough.
"It was a real adventure," Beccaria said once he was back on board and dripping on the cockpit floor. "To free the keel, I had to dive at least five times. There was a line attached to a buoy but it was anchored at the bottom, and the tension was enormous. It took several attempts before I could remove it completely. The water, I thought it would be colder, but it wasn't easy anyway, especially because the current was pushing the boat around."
The last dive finally did it. He broke the surface with a shout, the net slack, the buoy drifting free. Standing back in the cockpit as the adrenaline visibly drained out of him, Beccaria let the cameras keep rolling.
By Wednesday morning New Zealand time, he had clawed his way back into contention, sitting fifth overall and 150 nautical miles behind race leader Sam Goodchild. Fourth-placed Francesca Clapcich of 11th Hour Racing was less than 25 miles ahead, a gap that counted for very little at this scale. He had kept himself in the fight by going overboard in polar waters and solving the problem with his own hands. For Beccaria, it was simply the latest in a string of difficulties that had followed him since the start. "From the beginning," he said, "so many things have already happened to me."
