Environmental assault

Le Defi's Tim Kroger described to James Boyd Saturday's encounter with Greenpeace

Following Le Defi Areva's encounter with Greenpeace on Saturday, when a RIB rammed the side of the team's brand new FRA-69 at 15 knots the day after her christening, crewman Tim Kroger was still incensed when he spoke to madfor sailing.

"For me it is really really shocking," expounded the German offshore sailor, who last year took French nationality to join Le Defi. "I am more than disappointed with the way Greenpeace and these activists are operating. I am more than shocked, because I always really rated the way Greenpeace operated to save the environment. The way they acted was unbelievable - on purpose, full speed, they were ramming our boat."

If this incident made Kroger and the rest of the team furious, then he says the disinformation campaign carried out by Greenpeace subsequent to the incident has pushed the team to the brink. "What really shocked me was the way they do their media work. They said that one of OUR boats has pushed their rubber dinghy into the America's Cup Class boat, but the images on television they tell a different story. They do their circling with the police boat, then they see the gap in the travel lift bay and you see the guy on the rubber dinghy pointing with a finger towards the gap and telling the girl who was driving 'GO GO GO' - you can see this - and they were going straight for it and hit us.

"They wanted to make us responsible for them driving into our boat. And that is the meanest propaganda and disinformation you can do and that is better than Mr Honecker and Mr Goebbels have ever done. It is full-on disinformation, and that pissed me off big time and makes me very, very angry. People that act like that what else can they do? They think they are the crusaders and fighting for the right spirit - I mean - hang on..."

There had been another incident the previous day when Kroger says Greenpeace had tried to occupy the area of their dock where FRA-69 was due to be christened that evening. "They came with a wooden boat and they wanted to put their boat alongside our pontoon to take the space so that our boat can't get alongside the dock and then we tried to push the boat off and they said 'don't touch us, don't touch us - we have two disabled people on board'".

He continued: "To use handicapped people as a fender and not be touched and then to touch other people's property - that is really really bad, that is a spirit I would never had expected from an organisation so highly rated as Greenpeace. I find it absolutely disgusting."

At the time of the ramming on Saturday afternoon there were around 15 crew on board, five in the team's RIB trying to protect the boat and 30-40 of the shore team around the boat. Kroger says it was lucky no one was hurt. "They were going full throttle. They could have even hit one of us."

After the impact Kroger had leapt into the RIB in order to tie a line to it to have it towed away. "And then they were in their boat on their backs like beetles and they were going 'no, no don't touch us - we're pacificists'. This is unbelievable. It is a criminal act. It is like if you don't like your neighbour, you burn his house."

Kroger feels it was lucky the incident ended there. "The crew were all on full fire. To be honest in the heat of the moment, the Greenpeace guys could be lucky that more didn't happen. Some guys were really fired up and it was fully understandable. It is like someone who finds it funny to scratch cars with a key that are parked outside, just because they don't like cars. They did it deliberately. The intention was to damage the boat. And I think they have lost all credibility.

"For example the captain of Rainbow Warrior - he said he didn't like Areva being in the sport, but he wished Le Defi Francais all the best and 'Bon Navigation'. But this was not how they acted yesterday. It was really aggresive. But if they come one more time and try to come close to the boat...we're pretty strong, the guys and we're training pretty hard..."

The impact with FRA-69 was just forward of the shrouds a particularly sensitive area of the hull structurally where loads are carried for both the rig and the giant keel. "You could hear a loud crack and when we heard the crack everyone was shocked and very angry," said Kroger. "The way they have done it is unbelievable. Greenpeace is the name of the organisation and there was no peace. It was an act of war."

Kroger concluded: "What I feel sorry about is that yesterday evening we couldn't present the boat to the people of Lorient who have been supporting and helping us a lot with setting up at the submarine base. And that was a real shame, we couldn't do that because it had to stay on the hard with the damage that was done to it."

FRA-69 is to be tested with ultrasound today before it is decided how a repair should be carried out. But it is certain that there will be some amount of delamination between the carbon fibre skins and the Nomex core in this area and this will set the team back valuable days in their training for the America's Cup.