It’s funny that as I do a race, I have the words for the accompanying blog bost running through my head. The story as it unfolds is way more interesting and exciting than it is when I get back to the hard and try and put it all down on “paper”. The tole that a race like this takes on body, mind and spirit can’t be underestimated either, so everytime I go to write things down, all I want to do is go and get another meal and have a nap.
So now that I have had some time to recover, reflect, and talk to my peeps, I feel I have a little better perspective on things. So here goes nothing…
The Start
This race had 74 boats starting and the line was a busy thing but very familiar. The committee started towing us out of the harbour around 0900h for a 1300h start so there was a fair bit of time to put up sails, get all of the timing and bearings for the first leg figured out and generally get settled into the boat.
My main goal with the start was to stay out of trouble. I had a boat end start with about 15 other boats and found my self in pretty good position as I headed off the line and toward the first windward mark. (Short upwind leg was in place to get us all going in the right direction. Mark roundings in the Mini fleet are mayhem. we had a short offset and all of the boats extended their sprits and got kites up, only to find that the wind had shifted enough that we couldn’t fly them. I found myself with some really good boats around me and I had speed going into the first mark, so all in all it went ok.
First Leg out to Birvideau
The first leg had us going out to the end of the Quiberon peninsula and then North to Birvideau, a large shipping buoy north of Belle Isle. There are a lot of rocks and hazards on this leg and you really have to stay on top of your navigation. Doing nav is the least of your worries though, as you still have 70 minis really close by.
This leg felt really good. The lead protos had broken away and were starting to stretch out at the front of the fleet, but I was comfortable middle of the fleet, still with some boats that were way faster than mine. Emma Creighton and I were sailing side by side for a while (she in a much faster proto) until we were hit by a bunch of thunderstorms. The wind wasn’t that bad, I managed to keep my big kite up through it, but the rain and the hail that dumped on us was pretty impressive. I did well on this, as many of the boats saw the rain and lightning coming and started to reduce sail, which was the wrong thing to do.
The breeze moderated and steadied for our approach to Birvideau and the blast reach I was on was feeling pretty good. As I rounded Birvideau, I had lots of boats around, so I was still in touch and keeping the boat going fast.
The long Upwind leg to Isle d’Yeu
As dawn broke I found myself beating south to the Isle of Yeu. This is where things started to get hard. This 50nm leg was upwind and we had a pretty solid 15-22 knots of breeze. Just enough wind that putting a reef in or out was never far from my mind.
I’ve gotta say this up front: I suck at driving upwind. Always have. I have worked with coaches on it, I have analyzed video to try and refine my technique and identify problems. I still suck at it. I was lucky to have a few other boats around on this leg I could gage my relative performance and keep pushing south with the pack. It was here though that the first doubts started to creep in… Are we last? How many are behind us? This psychological game is a big, big part of mini sailing, as your only indication of where the other boats are comes from reports over the VHF. You have to have steely nerves to sail a mini.
Aside: While it is super nice to be able to watch races over the net, this is a perfect example of when the web can be misleading. While we were beating up in 15-20 knots of wind, the tracker was showing speeds which led everyone at home to believe that we were bobbing around in super light wind while in reality we were bashing away upwind in steep seas and contrary currents. After 10 hours of this crap you are just praying for a wind shift, even 10 degrees would make life almost bearable.
As the fleet converged on Yeu in the evening my fears started to subside. I had the Green Dragon guy just in front and a pile of other boats around.
Les Sable D’Lonne
From Isle d’ Yeu we headed into Les Sable D’lonne. It felt pretty good to be on a shorter leg with an ETA on the GPS of less then 10 hours. Les Sable is a busy fishing port that is really lit up at night so as we approached the rounding marks, the fleet converged again and I found myself dodging many other minis, and often in the headlights of the startled fishmen who were leaving port only to find a horde of little obsticles on thier way out to the “office”.
I rounded first thing in the morning with almost no breeze again. Seemed like an eternity to actually get around and start heading north again.
The long beat back up to Groix
The course required us to keep Yeu to starboard and we could take belle isle to either way as we headed all of the way north to isle de Groix. Looking up the race course from Les Sable, this looked a really long way….
I spoke to my friend Bjorn on the VHF and he was suffering from the psychliogical effects of the race. “I’m thirty miles out of Les Sable and the forecast is for the wind to go north! I HATE beating! I don’t think I can do another 100 miles of this…” Poor guy sounded like a little kid who just failed his math test and had been told he had to write it again. He bailed not long after and headed into Pornichet for a well deserved rest.
Not me though. My mantra was “All i have to do is finish in the time limit”. I pushed on.
I decided to go outside of Belle isle where I would have some sea room and not have the tricky navigation. The breeze was supposed to clock over the next 12-24 hours and I was hunting for the big lift all the way up to Groix. It actually did work out this way and I was feeling like a rocket scientist as I passed Belle Isle and found myself cracking sheets and pointing straight at Groix.
But elsewhere on the race course, things were not going as well. 18 boats ended up withdrawing on this leg north and suddenly It was getting very lonely in the back of the fleet. All of a sudden I went from bottom third to damn near last.
Stuck at Groix
I arrived at Groix in the evening with a dying breeze. After my radio checkin with the Semiphore station, I tried to tack over to clear the island and found myself with 2 knots of adverse current and enough breeze to push me along at 1-1.5 knots. There was a proto that rounded shortly after me, and the two of us tried going inshore and offshore to find some current relief with no luck. After a short chat on the radio we decided to wait it out and hopefully get out on the turn of the tide at 1800h. Three excrustiating hours to wait. We made dinner, cleaned up the boats and had a short nap.
On waking, I found we had a little breeze filling in and I was able to make some headway. I radioed over to my friend and we agreed that we should try and push on to the finish. Time was of the essence, as the finish line was to close at 0700h the following morning and it wasn’t until 1900h that we had broken free of Groix.
Finally sailing downwind with a bit of runway, I happily set a kite and made myself a BIG strong cup of coffee, to allow me the strength to push on all night.
The press to get to the finish
The ETA on the GPS kept changing to either side of 0700h. I constantly trimmed, restacked and generally tried to get every ounce of boat speed out of her. I ended up pushing too hard. Once I rounded the end of the Quiberon Peninsula, I was bagged. The boat was low on power so I had no autopilot to drive for me, and I kept nodding off to find the kite ragging or wrapped around the forestay. I finally took it down and slept for half a hour.
As it always does, the breeze died off in the morning and the ETA was not good. I was going to miss the finish time. As I approached the finish line three other boats convered on the finish and we fought our way to cross the line almost together. I crossed at 1015h. Damn.
Post Race Disillusion
Getting into harbour sucked. Most of the boats had thier sails drying on the deck and had heaps of gear on the dock. I loathed having the gaze of the top proto skippers on me as I was towed in, they now having a good nights sleep and a hangover.
I immediately went to the race office after getting tied up to see if the miles would count. I was told in no uncertain terms that they would not. After a couple of hard thumps on a desk and weepy, overly emotional phone call to Alison, I started to realize that I was way too screwed up to be worried about this right now. I needed a huge feed and big sleep. With lunch out of the way, I checked into the a hotel around 1600h and fell asleep on the bed in my clothes and didn’t wake until 0400h the next day.
Delivery Home
My flights were booked for Saturday morning and the forecast was looking really light and I just had to get the boat back to Lorient as quickly as I could in order to make them. Emma, Scott and I set off around 0900h on Thursday morning (less than 24 hours after finishing) and headed north towards home.
The delivery sucked. Light, light, light. I got really sick of seeing zeros. Zero wind speed. Zero boat speed. This forty mile delivery should have taken an afternoon turned into a 24 hour odyssey. I arrived in Lorient the next day and immediately had to get the boat ready to be hauled.
I’m not sure I can explain the level of exhaustion adequately. The race was bad enough but the emotional tole of the time limit thing was never far from my mind. Again, I headed for another big feed with some of the sailors from Lorient, and checked into a hotel and made arrangements for a 0545h cab to the airport. Once again, I didn’t even get to turn down the bed and fell asleep in my clothes until the alarm went off at 0515h.
What Now
So now I am back in Kingston and really, really enjoying spending time with Alison and Gabe. After all of this sailing in France, it is really wonderful to be home and realizing what is important in life.
I will write a letter to Classe Mini begging them to allow the race miles to count, but I am not overly hopeful. I will head back to France in June to sail the Mini Fastnet either way. If they don’t allow the miles, then this dream of sailing the Transat is over for me. I’m not bitter though. The sailing we have done is worth all of this effort and I have made so many friends doing this. I just LOVE these little boats and I will never regret having the privilege to sail them.
But three hours….
