Flying Irishman Tom Dolan 'relaxed and ready' to defend Figaro

Tom Dolan, Smurfit Kappa-Kingspan - La Solitaire du Figaro Paprec © Alexis Courcoux

Ireland's top offshore sailor Tom Dolan will start his defence of the prestigious Solitaire du Figaro off the coast of France on Sunday morning. The Kinsgpan-sponsored Meath yachtsman is the first sailor from the English-speaking world to win this grand prix event - known as sailing's 'Tour de France' - in its 55-year history.

At 1.02pm local time, 35 skippers will line up off Le Havre to begin the first of three legs, each in excess of 600 nautical miles long. In each, they'll sail solo, non-stop for roughly three days at a time, in their identical 35-foot Beneteau Figaro 3 racing yachts.

The forecast for Leg 1 - starting in Le Havre and ending in Baie de Morlaix - is for heavy winds and high seas, but the reigning champion is calmly looking forward to it.

"There's definitely a lot of pressure off," said Tom. "I've never been so relaxed going into an event. Probably because I don't have that voice in the back of my head anymore saying, 'Jesus will I ever win this thing?', you know? That's good. That's definitely gone, yes, so I hope hopefully having fun is the big thing, enjoy it, have fun."

Leg 1 was scheduled to take the sailors from Le Havre, around the Fastnet Rock and back to Roscoff, but the forecast sea state has meant that Dolan won't be heading across the Irish sea this time, as organisers don't want to send the fleet into obviously unsafe conditions. For Dolan, the lack of a 'home leg' of sorts won't make a difference, he's focused on the end result.

'We usually sail fairly close to Baltimore and if it's the right time we get to see the beacon, it's always a nice little reminder of kind of where I came from and it's a lovely part of the world, but I try not to let it get into my head too much, to concentrate on what's important, what I can control."

One thing he's worked hard to control is every variable on the boat, and his own physical preparation.

"We didn't want to get complacent this winter, so we kind of just took everything and just said, 'Can we improve it by just a little tiny percentage,' and I think we did. For example, on the flat sails we looked at batten tension or batten stiffness and I took off a little bit of luff curve off the mainsail. We had a look at the way I tuned the mast because is there a better way of tuning the mast? So hopefully, all is definitely in a better place.

"I think I'm in a better place physically anyway - it felt easy because I was injured last year, so I'm feeling in better and better shape."

Taking a break from the Figaro to sail fully crewed IMOCA 60s has allowed Tom return to the Figaro fresh and with new perspectives - particularly on his sleeping patterns while sailing solo.

"They said to me at the end of it - we did a debrief, you know - they were shocked by how much I could go without sleep, you know, how little sleep I did. I noticed that I slept a little bit less than the others, I needed less sleep. So I kind of took it as a sign that I don't sleep enough at sea and I'd always wondered a bit about that, because I had noticed that after a leg I'd be a bit more tired than other people, but I'd always done better at the end of legs and I'd always run a bit better when the nights were long.

"So in a roundabout way, I had to discover that maybe I do need a little less sleep than other people. It also definitely makes me a bit more confident in the strong wind because you know, the boats look kind of small to me now."