Qualified insanity

Posted in Uncategorized. Written by admin on April 11th, 2009

There are highs and lows in all parts of life, but these are certainly amplified by sailing a little boat a long way by oneself.The Mini 6.5 racing yachts like mine are designed specifically for doing long downwind races like the Transat later this year but because they are so optimised for one point of sail the quality of my day is directly dependent on the way the wind is blowing.

My father, and many sailors before him, stated that “Gentlemen do not go to windward” and while I went to a fancy finishing school I certainly cannot claim to be a gentleman, and thus am forced to crash and bash my way upwind in a little boat that probably hates the process more than I do.

But I am getting ahead of myself.

The goal for the qualifier and the next two races are to be quite conservative and learn as much as possible without breaking anything significant as the schedule is tight and I can’t afford any mishaps in my run to gain to qualification for the Transat later this year. In order to learn as much as possible about my rhythm while racing I was wearing a special watch that recorded my movement throughout the day to find my natural highs and lows. This will allow me to tailor my day while racing so that I can rest most efficiently as sleep is a privilege, not a right, when racing solo!

In order to get into the rhythm as quickly as possible my sleep doctor demanded that I not sleep for more than 24hrs before my departure so as to be receptive to any sleep that came over me. All well and good except that I mistook a big lighthouse for a square rigged pirate vessel and got a little closer to its reef than I should have before realising my mistake.

I successfully navigated past the rest of the Brittany coast and out into the Channel whereupon I was completely becalmed…. in fog. Unfortunately I was shooting from the hip as far as my meteorology information was concerned because my long range radio receiver packed up and a barometer that I had borrowed was eternally pessimistic and remained at 960 millibars for the entire trip.

Fortunately I had just finished a very in depth weather briefing session with Jean -Yves Bernot and recognised the approach of a big frontal system and put up the big spinnaker in order to make good use of it. The wind built, it poured with rain and the waves in the Irish Sea quickly became huge so that my little boat was bouncing down them like a stone on a pond. I managed to keep the full main and big spinnaker up in over 30kts of wind and recorded a max speed of almost 17kts which is pretty good for such a small boat. Later on my approach to La Rochelle that it pays to sail with a little less sail area as this allows the boat to plane easily rather than putting its head down and shouldering the aside the waves with brute force and ignorance.

I managed to derive a good rhythm while sailing and consciously chose to take it easy and let the boat look after itself as I know I can always work harder while sailing but first I need the boat to earn my trust. I rested well before parts I knew would be hard and finished in a little less than 8 days. I was however using the same chart as I used while delivering the racing catamaran last year and it was with great disappointment that I looked at the disparity in their respective speeds.

While this is a dinky little boat, it really has legs downwind and I need to become a really good Mini sailor before I can graduate to bigger faster boats. In the meantime I am now making small modifications to the boat in preparation for the upcoming races and can rest easily knowing that I am now half qualified for the Mini Transat later this year.

Fingers crossed!

Watch below as I am escorted by a pod of dolphins through the Irish Sea. Another of the mini sailors who was out doing the qualifying voyage at the same time as me had dolphins save his boat from a sorry end on the rocks. He had fallen asleep while heading in towards shore when the was awoken by a dolphin knocking on the hull and splashing to wake him up when he was dangerously close to the rocks. Next time you see flipper, throw him a kipper to say thanks.