Solo Concarneau

However good my intensions are of getting these things out straight after the event it never ends up straight forward. After finishing on Wednesday night, sleeping like the dead for 12 hours and getting to the prize giving the next day for tentative handshakes on sore hands and finding out who finished where at the front of the fleet, opportunities for more rest weren’t very forthcoming. Having been a total moron and letting go of my main halyard at the finish so that it ran up into the mast, first on the jobs list was the horrible task of free climbing  the last five foot of the mast to rethread it. Whilst not the most technical piece of climbing the risk of falling twice the five foot of slack in the halyard onto non stretch rope in your harness is enough to put the willies right up me. With this done and the mess of 55 hours of racing mostly cleared out of the boat it was time to put shiny new sails on the boat and head out into the windy afternoon for a photo shoot only making it to dinner an hour late at nine thirty. The next day saw a hectic morning of pulling boats out of the water and loading as much surplus baggage into my shiny CurraDinghy van for the drive home as possible.

So onto the race. A brief summary. First afternoon and night, light winds, sailing around the best of France has to offer in rocks and headlands in a tight bunch of boats with lots of place changing, figaro racing at its best. Dawn day one, the wind shut down before filling in, probably predictably from the south west for the rest of the race. I managed to land myself squarely in the wrong part of the ocean for this bit and the fleet strung out for a long reach around Ile de Yeu and back, in the rain. To say this was a low points would be an understatement. Hearing that eight boats had already made the canny move of heading home to avoid the 250 mile procession through the drizzle was a further kick in the teeth.

It was some time around now that I remembered how much of these races is often spent questioning the sense in sailing around by yourself for days on end, making resolutions to never come back and desperately looking for entertainment. The things that helped cheer me up on the emotional roller coaster included: sleep, food, a well timed radio chat with Sam just behind and finally the presence of a small, tired bird perching on the chart table for an hour or so, clearly in need of some company himself. Even better that these things for repairing the mood on the good ship 23 was approaching the turning point in the course having made some good inroads into the boats ahead. Tacking into thirty knots around the back of the island with six boats in sight brought the race back into sharp focus and the big positive I’m taking from the experience is how I managed to turn it on in the final stages. Probably due to having done some good sleeping the day before I manage to reverse the trend I’d got into last year of finishing poorly and took three places in the last 12 hours. A good way to banish the bad memories and give myself a strong hunger for the solitaire in three weeks time.

29 days to the Solitaire

29 days until we set off for Portugal on the first leg of the Solitaire and only 21 till we have to be up the river in Bordeaux. I am feeling very excited for the month of racing ahead. As ever  there is plenty to do to get ready but things feel a little calmer this time round compared to last year. Now, I know what to expect and I’ve been thinking long and hard about how to do things better since I finished my first Solitaire in Cherbourg last July. Everything from a sneaky way to cook and eat a boil in the bag and a freeze dried meal at once to save time and water to using a gopro with a wifi link on a stick to see weed on the keel. Doing well at this type of racing demands that you get the details right. Every movement on the boat needs to be as efficient as possible and every inch gained makes a difference to the all important cumulative finish time.

Last year I finished a credible but not earth shattering 25th position. Having not spent as much time as I’d have liked training before the first race of the season I haemorrhaged places overnight to end up a disappointing 19th. My goal from now is to improve on these two results. Ideally by a good margin and I think the biggest area for improvement will come from managing sleep and pushing myself. My worst moments in both these races have come at times when I have been too sleepy to sail the boat properly. Waking up at the helm with the sails flapping in a minor broach isn’t fast and no matter how much I want to keep my eyes open sometimes it’s not possible. I had a similar problem in French debriefs after sailing in Lorient last year (embarrassing in a very small group) that could only be solved by a well timed coffee. Something I have previously been keen to stay awayfrom in the Figaro for fear of the inevitable crash after the initial high. In reality there are times when you absolutely HAVE to be awake that are usually followed by some chance to rest a bit at some stage. So for this next race I’m planning to load up with tea bags, red bull and pro plus and see how far I get.

On a similar theme is the subject pushing yourself or the ability to man up and get stuck in. As with most forms of offshore sailing (and probably sport in general) making a Figaro go really fast over a long period involves doing a lot of things that are hard work/ boring/ unpleasant for a tiny tiny improvement in performance. Keeping up the motivation to stack every last halyard tail, check for weed every 15 minutes or do that headsail change that you’ve been putting off for half an hour is easy at the begging and the end but to keep subjecting yourself every minute of every hour of the leg isn’t always easy.

Between the Solo Concarneau and the Solitaire I will spend a few days in the UK before coming back to deliver to Bordeaux and do some final bits of work onboard. Hanging out before the start in Bordeaux without many planned boat jobs will be a treat. Obviously things always come up that need doing but the more time available for relaxation and getting on with weather homework and mandatory race things the more enjoyable the whole experience will be. Which after all is the main aim of the exercise, after winning.

Solo Arrimer

Arriving in Les Sables d’Olonne four days before the start of the first race of my Figaro season, having not sailed the boat at all this year probably wasn’t the best preparation. Luckily, while I’d been away having a nice time 470 racing in Palma, the power of the Artemis support team had been in action getting Figaro 23 off the truck and and kindly rigging it all up for me. This meant I got a chance to have one practice sail before the start  of the Solo Arrimer, to remind myself of all the most basic boat handling mistakes.  How big the boat felt and how physical it is just getting out of the harbour was a bit of a shock to the system. Looking up at the big spinnaker for the first time in a while after having spent so long staring at the ten times smaller 470 kite, was a little mind blowing for the first few minutes.

Compared to this time last year, getting ready for the race start was a lot less stressful. Having been through all the measurement procedures and work up before and having good notes from last season, meant that I was able to relax and enjoy the process and focus on what’s important rather than getting stressed by the little things. By the morning of the start I was mostly ready and confident that I knew roughly what to expect on the course. The start was a tricky affair in light winds and big waves, with boats sailing at all sorts of odd angles trying to get moving in the swell. I escaped from a slightly iffy start after a big shift on the first beat let me back into the race and a couple of hours in, the six English speakers in the race were in a tight bunch approaching Ile de Ré. I dropped my spinnaker first and got a scare as I knocked my pilot off mid way through, causing the boat to spin out and nearly smash into a huge metal channel marker. Flash backs to leg three of the Solitaire du Figaro last year were going through my mind, but I somehow managed to avoid hitting any other boats and trawling my kite and kept going.

In the best match up to a pre-race forecast ever, the breeze gradually built and built as we reached along the coast into dark. I got a bit out of sync with the weather and ended up doing three jib changes where one would have been fine. It was great boat handling practice, but spending 15 minutes on the bow in the dark in 30 knots of wind, with waves washing over you at 12 knots is neither comfortable nor fast. At one point, while I was struggling to clip the new sail onto the bow, I was getting hosed so frequently I couldn’t breath. I’m sure after this that water boarding would be a completely ineffective method of torture on me. This also marked a time in the race where my performance started to suffer, as I really struggled for pace on the long long 90nm reaching leg. Being able to see the competition on AIS is great, but it’s quite demoralising to see the boats around you sailing off at a rate of about one mile every two hours, all night.

After getting rid of the genoa, which I had stupidly left lashed to the bow and was filling up with water and slowing me down, and doing a back down to remove a suspect chunk of weed off the keel (not easy in 35 knots) – I got things a bit more sorted for the return reaching leg and had a great blast along right next to Dave Keneflick, with the huge waves behind us and squalls bringing hail and forty knots of wind.

With another boat alongside and daylight appearing, my frustrations at losing so much distance over night evaporated and I got back into enjoying the experience and trying to chip away at the race. With this slightly more philosophical view on things, I had a much more pleasant time over the second half of the race, managing my sleep and sailing the boat a lot better. Ending up 19th wasn’t quite what I’d hoped for, but going into the race cold my goals were never about performance, but more getting the process right and having something to work on for the next race in Concarneau in three weeks and the Solitaire du Figaro in June.