After 1350 miles of downwind sailing I was thrilled to cross the finish line on Saturday in 4th place out of 72 starters in the 2005 Mini Transat’s 1st leg from Le Rochelle to Lanzarote. It has been such a rewarding result not only for me but I’m sure for all who have helped with the project, including my sponsors who’ve enabled me to compete in this fantastic race.
Following more than two years of preparation to get to the start of the 2005 Mini Transat I really couldn’t quite believe that I was going to race across the Atlantic single-handed. Before going down to La Rochelle to prepare in the fortnight before the race I had felt fairly apprehensive about the big challenge that lay ahead, but once surrounded by the competition in the racing village I felt fully psyched up to get the job done. Basically I took the view that the first leg was just a long qualifying race, of which I’ve done several, and the second leg is only about twice the distance of the first. In the month leading up the Transat, GBR 419, Le Gallais, had a big overhaul including re-rigging the mast, replacing pretty much all of the electronics, replacing several sails, and rigging up the boat with solar panels. After my generator packed up a few days before the start I decided to acquire an extra couple of panels so that I could charge the batteries purely from solar power during the race. Several friends came down the week before the start and were an enormous help in getting the boat ready, and even then it was tight getting everything ready before the off.
The time finally arrived on raceday, Saturday 17th September, to get towed out to the start in a lively 20-25 knots of wind. I took my father onboard 419 for the tow out to the start to also witness the amazing atmosphere with waves and cheers from probably around 10 thousand people lining the harbour entrance as we got towed out through the pierheads one by one. Single-handed sailing is a very highly respected sport in France and I actually found it quite embarrassing being such a centre of attention. However soon we had the crowd behind us with sails up, and my father said his goodbyes, got into a rib and left me to switch my mind to the race. There were boats absolutely everywhere and I planned on just getting off the line cleanly – the last thing you want to do is damage something at the start or get a huge penalty for being 2 inches over the line. Just before the start I had time to appreciate the atmosphere. It was quite something: spectator boats, yachts, motor-boats, and ribs all over the place, several warships, and even helicopters.
At the gun I was near the line, and sailed fairly conservatively up to the degagement buoy half a mile away, which I rounded in about 5th place. I hoisted the kite fairly cleanly at the start of the 8-mile run to the Fort Boyard, but gybed a bit too early, finding myself on a dead run to the mark. Despite being determined not to mess up a leeward mark rounding in front of a few thousand more people in spectator boats the boat semi-gybed itself before the mark (not planned), but I breathed a sigh of relieve as I managed to gybe back, hugged the mark and then was quite pleased with myself to overtake two boats at the same time!
After that it was a close reach up to the entrance of the Bay of La Rochelle, and we were soon bearing away in the direction of Finisterre and launching spinnakers. I put up my medium spinnaker, which turned out to be a good choice, and I closed slowly on the leaders over the next couple of hours as night fell and the wind picked up as we got offshore. But I was not happy – I felt I was pushing the boat too hard for the first night, slightly beyond my limits, since it always takes a day or so into a race to fully regain confidence with these over powered boats. The last thing I wanted to do was lose my mast the first night, which is what unfortunately happened to Irishman Cian Mc Carthy, although this was a problem with his mast, not a consequence of him pushing the boat too hard. I change down to my small fractional spinnaker for a few hours until it was more settled, then put my medium kite back up and started to regain the places I had lost that night.
After going really well for a few hours the spinnaker got a twist in it and whilst dropping it I lost control and it ended up in the water. Instantly the force of the water pulled it to the back underside of the boat and it ended up caught under the rudders - not good. As I was thinking I might just be able to save it before any damage occurs it suddenly started horribly ripping itself badly and then got doubly worse by wrapping around the keel as well. There was nothing I could do about it except reach for my big dive knife and cut it away, and it took almost an hour at that. I just couldn’t believe it: One day into a month-long race and I had lost my most useful spinnaker, why on earth did this have to happen in the Transat?
Feeling really down for a couple of hours I hoisted my large spinnaker and soon pulled myself together a felt a lot more positive as I made good progress towards Finisterre that day. Later the wind picked enough for me to change to the small spinnaker and I got a great lift in my favour, which blasted me around the top of NW Spain. As with the first night there was too much wind to sleep as the autopilot couldn’t cope well with the waves and so I hand-steered until the morning when the wind had eased off to about 20 knots. At this point I was in about 6th place (I did not know this at the time), but I felt I had played good catch up that night. I went below to get a bit of sleep but instantly the wind suddenly disappeared altogether and I quickly had to gybe offshore to avoid getting stuck in a growing wind hole, so headed SW in an attempt to find more wind. Getting bogged down for a couple of hours in light airs I took the opportunity to change a sail batten that had broken in the night. Throughout the day the wind increased the more offshore I headed so I made the decision to keep going until the wind levelled off. I found myself at about 11°W that third night screaming along with the small kite averaging around 12-13 knots in 25 knots of wind. I knew I was making up places and pushed really hard all night, managing to move from 6th up to 3rd by Tuesday morning before the breeze eased off and I changed back to big spinnaker and gybed back East.
I was having big issues with sleep deprivation. The major problem was that the big spinnaker was too powerful for the autopilot to cope with, and since I lost by medium spinnaker I would have to try and sleep with the big kite up to stop me losing valuable time. Five minutes after engaging it and falling asleep the boat would end up either broaching or crash-gybing. By that evening I was completely spent so decided to change down to small spinnaker to get an hour or so sleep. I was completely underpowered and thought I had lost lots of time to the leaders that night but heard a position report the next morning and found that I was still in 3rd place, 22 miles behind the leader, Corentin Douget on E.Leclerc Bouyges Telecom . This was the first report I had heard all race and considering I wasn’t even sure if I was in the top 10, was quite pleased. I had actually been only 11 miles behind the leader the day before and closing but lost 10 miles that night.
That day (Wednesday) I pushed hard downwind, gybing off to go slightly further west than before and managed to make up a couple of miles over Corentin by sunset. Again I had the big kite up all day in 15 – 18 knots of wind so there was no opportunity for sleep. At dusk I decided to drop the big spinnaker again for an hour whilst I stocked up on more valuable sleep and re-hoisted it around 10pm. After pulling 95sqm of spinnaker to the masthead and sheeting on as normal I couldn’t understand why there was no pressure despite having plenty of wind. I looked under the boom and got a big shock: the spinnaker had ripped all the way down the middle from the head to the clew, and the leeward half had twisted and tangled itself up beyond all belief. I just couldn’t believe it, I felt cursed – I had got within touching distance of a decent result and now this. No big spinnaker, no top 10 finish that was for sure. I realised there was only one thing to do, try and repair it. I could have cried like Ellen MacArthur, but this wouldn’t do any favours for my position in the race, so I had to try and repair the damn thing. Although it looked totally beyond repair I decided I had nothing to lose now by giving it a go, so set to work untangling it and sticking it back to work with gaffer tape. It took pretty much all night to repair. I finished a whole role of gaffer tape since the tear was so big, but fortunately I had loads of sticky Dacron concealing the electronics around the boat, so I was reusing this to great effect. Just before first light the next day I rehoisted and to my utter amazement, the repair held and we were off again! It was actually really satisfying to overcome this big hurdle and be sailing again and I felt very positive once more.
Throughout the next day and night I had downwind conditions similar to previous few days, except that during the night the wind dropped enough for me to attempt to sleep during the night, although this was still very hard since the boat was so on edge. I was beginning to suffer badly from sleep deprivation and was getting very spaced out. Once I woke up after 20 minutes, but still half asleep I was convinced I should be sailing upwind, not downwind. I grabbed the helm, sharply turned the boat upwind, and sent the boat into a huge broach! It took a few minutes to wake up properly, realise what was happening and recover my course.
By the next morning the wind had picked up again to over 20 knots and I was overpowered holding onto my big spinnaker. Suddenly there was a mini only 100m or so behind me, on opposite tack. It was Yves Le Blevec sailing the 2003 Mini Transat winning, super-fast downwind flyer, 151. He had slowly caught me up over the last couple of days when I had my problems, and it didn’t take long to cruise past me. It was impossible to hold him off without my medium spinnker which would have been perfect for the current conditions, so I watched helplessly as he sailed faster and deeper than me all day and frustratingly getting smaller and smaller on the horizon.
That night the wind picked up to 23-25 knots so I soon had the small kite back up now with less than 100 miles to the northern point of Lanzarote, although tiredness was becoming a big problem. A couple of times I fell asleep at the helm, the boat crash gybed and I would wake up on the leeward side of the boat in the water and then would have to change runners, get the boat going again and gybe back on course. This was definitely not fast. It is quite amazing when you are properly rested how you can sail a hell of a lot quicker and make up the time, but it is very difficult to realise that and put it into action. Unfortunately now though there was too much wind to use the autopilot until the finish, so I just had to push myself hard to try and stay awake. I found that one of the best ways to stay awake is to eat continuously, but before long this leads to feeling quite ill!
The next morning I felt as though I had lost a lot of time that night, and had no idea what position I would finish in. I was sure I wouldn’t be in the top 5, and although feeling pretty depressed in the early morning, I soon perked up as I approached the coast of Lanzarote and got the boat organised, freshened up and took some photos. As I came in to the bay of Puerto Calero I thought I heard gabbling over the VHF about 7 boats finishing so thought I would be 8th. I was joined by a rib who took some great photos of me power reaching towards the finishing line under reefed main and headsail. It wasn’t until I was towed into the harbour and saw just 3 boats there that I realised I had finished 4th, so was delighted with my first leg result. It had been an incredibly fast race, and I had completed the 1350 mile course in under a week, taking 6 days 21hr 01min, and averaging 8 knots.
Lessons learnt from leg 1: Keep yourself together even when things look impossible. Whatever happens you just have to keep plugging away. Don’t lose a spinnaker on the first night. And most importantly, make sure you get enough sleep to help you stay mentally focussed – it’s faster!
The biggest task I have since arriving is to try and repair my spinnakers in time for the start of the second leg, which starts on the 8th. There is quite a bit of work to do on the boat before then but the priority is to fit in a bit of relaxation since I don’t envisage getting much in 3 weeks at sea if it’s anything like the first leg! The big difference though is that after the doldrums it is about a week and a half of upwind sailing so it should be a lot easier to sleep. That’s the theory anyway...!