Vendee Globe - the Real Race

[MysticGringo]

Instead of wading thru the other vendee glove thread that's mostly about the virtual racing in order to find commentary on the actual race, I thought I'd start a new topic that doesn't involve the virtual race. Mods, if that's not cool, feel free to delete this.

So, Kito has retired due too "being hit" by a trawler and his team is implying the fault is with the trawler not having AIS on. It seems they are placing all the blame on the trawler, however the areas of damage seem to imply that Kito ran into the trawler.

Naturally a singlehanded race like this means there's no possible way to keep a proper watch the whole 3 or 4 months. I kind of feel that immediately placing the blame on the trawler in this situation is entirely premature and probably not entirely correct.

What are the rules about running AIS? Obviously if you have it, you should run it... but what are the rules?