Diary Update 9th May 2008

As usual the last month or so has been a bit full on. Having decided not to do the Transat and to concentrate instead on earning a living working on various sailing projects I suddenly found myself the proud new owner of Dominic Vittet’s Akilaria 40 ATAO Audio Systems which did so well on the TJV.

The main reason for this was because the Rogers boat was not available for charter and because a well-known sailing sponsor had expressed an interest in sponsoring me for the Transat. So with very little time and very few boats on the market it was an easy decision to make.

Whilst all this was going on I found the time to fit in a great weeks’ sailing on Salperton at the St Barth’s Bucket with, amongst others, Ado Stead and Andy Hemmings. Salperton is the new Dubois 44m which has a colossal sail plan and the fantastic trade winds we had every day certainly tested us all to the limit. The boat was incredible upwind, we matched the J class Ranger for height and speed. Off the wind was just as good, although dealing with the kite was fairly testing and involved all hands for the take down. I hope to get the chance to race on her in the Med later in the year.

Returning to the UK from the Caribbean was a nightmare as we missed our connecting flight in Guadeloupe (thanks Air France). For a while things were looking pretty grim, but we managed to get on a Caribe Air (!) flight later that evening and finally got back to London half a day later than planned.

This was not ideal for me; that evening I was on a ferry to France to collect the new 40. I had just about enough time to have a shower, grab my sailing bag and get to Hamble to meet the rest of the team. As usual Jason Field was on the squad; he had hired a trailer for the boat cradle and was going to drive Dan Gohl and me down to La Trinite in southern Brittany along with all the kit we needed.

After a very long day in France the cradle had been dismantled and loaded, the boat was fuelled and ready to go to sea. Dan and I left at dusk and headed offshore. I am not sure that I was ideally prepared for my first night at sea on a new boat. I was absolutely knackered and really feeling the cold. Luckily Dan had not been to the Caribbean and was rather more immune to the sub-zero temperature and not feeling the effects of an overnight flight and time change. The trip was fairly eventful; after a good first night we passed Ushant at lunch time with the tide turning against us and the visibility worsening. The next 18 hours were very frightening. To start with our radar behaved perfectly and as we crossed the shipping lining up for the separation zone, we felt moderately safe. The vis rapidly deteriorated so that we could hardly see the bow. Unfortunately the radar then decided to stop working, at the time we had 5 ships within two miles of us.

I could hear engines all around us and I woke Dan up and got on the VHF for the next few hours. Having put out an all ships call I spoke to the traffic controller who promised to keep an eye on us and any ships in our vicinity. It was a very long night. At dawn a ship passed within a few hundred meters of us and all we saw was the middle bit of it. We were very grateful to our guardian angel for keeping us safe and the rest of the trip was much more enjoyable with variable conditions, so we were able to amuse ourselves putting up different sails.

The following week was spent getting the boat ready for the Transat qualifier. This largely involved getting the electronics sorted out, Mark Wylie from Eastern Electronics came down for a few days to sort out the NKE instruments, fit an Iridium phone and a computer for charting and routing. We also removed all the yellow vinyl that was covering the boat,got a diver to clean the bottom, overhauled all the running rigging and gave the boat a bloody good clean (thanks Klara).

Then I went off on the qualifier which I was not really looking forward to. This was the first time I had sailed a boat of this size on my own, and I was not sure how I was going to fare. I had set a course that took me towards Ushant then up to the Eddystone then back to the Solent, a total distance of around 400 miles. The hardest bit was getting out of the Solent. I couldn't have picked a worse day. When I hoisted the main at Calshot in 27kts, the reefing lines bent all the aerials on the back - lesson number one! Main with two reefs and the staysail seemed to be the call. So far so good. Then the next drama, having to beat out past Calshot and the Brambles (depth not working at this point) - in hindsight I should have waited to hoist the staysail until I had a nice long leg in which to settle down and get sorted - lesson number two. Just about everything that could go wrong did go wrong. The boat tacked in about 3 seconds flat when I pushed the tack button on the auto pilot, and the first few times caught me completely off guard. Changing the settings seemed to make absolutely no difference at all. Throw in a few riding turns on the jib sheets and I really had a bit on. Once I was past this restricted area though, things got a lot better with some time to get on top of these teething problems. About an hour later as a particularly vicious rain squall arrived the wind instruments went berserk. Looking up I saw that the wand had moved around in its socket and was jammed at 90 degs to our heading. Shit! I managed to get hold of Dudley (Mr Fix it in Lymington) who organised me a berth in Lymington Yacht Haven that I could easily get into on my own and a selection of tools. Within minutes I was at the masthead and the wand was refixed in place.

All seemed to be working and I was soon heading back out to sea. The remainder of the qualifier went a lot better, Mark Lloyd even got some pictures of me leaving the Solent which make it look a lot less windy than it was!

The first night we were on the wind with about 22kts so plenty of practice for the Transat. Reefs in and out with the breeze, managed a few 20 minute cat naps and felt surprisingly good at dawn, when I put the Solent up as the wind died to 10kts. The rest of the day was fairly busy with the breeze up and down but always on the wind. There were plenty of ships about as I crossed the shipping lanes. When I was about 20 miles from the waypoint the wind swung to the north, which gave me a good angle to the mark but a beat up to Plymouth! We passed the Eddystone at 8am, the sun was out and I actually felt warm for the first time. The wind backed to the west and I put the kite up. The pilot had done a great job upwind, and I was fairly confident in its performance downwind. In flat water and 15kts of breeze it was fine, but as the sea and wind built the pilot began to struggle. After a few wipe outs and a few calls to Mark Wylie it was not much better, so I steered as much as possible. It was a relief when the wind headed us and we had white sails up again.

After an enjoyable sail past Portland and Anvil Point with the Solent and a reef at 15kts I finally made it back to Hamble at 3am, feeling tired but elated - I had come through relatively unscathed.
The next week was spent with the boat out of the water, a fresh coat of anti-fouling on the keel and rudders - the most important job involving blocking the keel off and undoing some of the bolts to add some laminate around the keel socket. This was all supervised by Ollie Cameron and dealt with by Martin from RF Composites who did a very neat and tidy job. Hopefully this is one area I won’t have to worry about during the next few weeks!

With plenty still to do and the clock ticking, it was time for us to leave for the build up to the start in Plymouth. Dan and I had a fantastic delivery which took only 15 hours. Bearing in mind we only had about 5kts of wind for the first few hours this was pretty good going.


Diary Update 26th February 2008

Since arriving back in the UK after the TJV, I seem to have hardly stopped rushing about. Within a week of being home I was on a plane to the Canaries to help out with Mike Golding’s Open 60 Ecover who had been forced to retire from the race back from Brazil with charging and pilot problems.

Having spent a very busy two days getting the boat sorted out we left the Canaries for Porto Mayo on the south coast of Portugal. With Christmas looming the wind gods were good to us and we had a very fast trip north. The last day was true Open 60 sailing; fast, wet and exhilarating. I, for one, was glad that this Ecover has a cuddy to hide from the elements in as we surfed down waves with water being thrown everywhere. Just home in time to rush around and get my Christmas shopping done, then a flying visit to Scotland on Boxing Day, to see my mother who had my sister and her family staying. This was great for Millie who was able to catch up with her cousins who live miles away in Derbyshire.

Meanwhile, out in Brazil, the boat was finally loaded onto the ship on the 26th December after endless delays. Alex and Miranda (40 Degrees) who had kindly agreed to load the boat eventually handed the boat loading duties to Yann Noblet from Apart City who nobly stayed to load all nine of the 40s onto the ship. At last we now had an ETA for the boat in Lorient. Unfortunately the ship’s arrival coincided with low after low sweeping the south of England and I was forced to leave the boat in Lorient until the weather cleared up. I drove down to Lorient with Tom Gall from Concise and we unloaded the boats from the ship and put them in a tiny marina in the town centre which was well protected from the south westerlies. We then dismantled the boats’ cradles and loaded them onto the trailer we had brought with us. It was pouring with rain and we finally finished at 7pm. Feeling very damp we set off on the long drive to Caen and the ferry. It was a truly awful night with torrential rain and we were glad to finally arrive in Ouistraham at 2am.

With the 40 safely tied up in France and terrible weather forecast for at least ten days, I went back to Portugal to join Ecover on her next leg. Matt, Tim, Ed and I headed off to Palma and this time the wind gods were not so kind and the trip was fairly challenging with over 40kts on the nose going through the straights of Gibraltar. Luckily the wind eased but remained stubbornly on the nose for the rest of the trip and it was with some relief that we finally tied up in Palma. The boat was there to have a small refit before her two-boat testing with the new Aviva in March. I stayed for a few days to help get the boat unloaded and the sails off before the rig came out and the work started.

After a weekend at home I caught the Sunday overnight ferry to St. Malo, We picked up a hire car and headed down to Lorient with a delivery crew consisting of my nephew Josh, Rachel Howe from Diverse and Robert Blackwell who looks after the boat for Mark W-S. We had a small window in the weather and had to leave on the Monday night or risk a lot of breeze at the end of the trip. After a frantically busy day we managed to leave at last light and motor sailed along the French coast to Brest. It was a lovely calm night and more by luck than judgement we caught the tide at the headlands and made good progress. It was looking like a fairly uneventful trip. The wind was as forecast and we were making good time with an ETA of early Wednesday, well ahead of the forecast bad weather.

So I was rather surprised to be woken on the Tuesday night by Robert apologising that the wind was now on the nose and in the high 20s. It was freezing on deck and I immediately put two reefs in the main and filled the ballast tanks. This calmed things down a bit so we could take stock of the situation. We were off Guernsey and the wind was now blowing from the Solent. Not good in January. I rang Gabrielle at 1 am and asked her to check the forecast. Unfortunately we could not get any weather info as a leak from the windows above the nav station had wrecked the iridium data block, so no new grib files! Luckily it appeared that it was only a front and the wind would eventually ease and back to the North West, but the next few hours were very wet and cold with the wind up in the low 30s. At last at dawn the wind eased and we were able to lay the Needles. Although freezing cold it was a fantastic mornings’ sailing and we came through the Needles passage with sheets eased at 10 knots. We were all very glad to be finally moored up in Lymington, boat and crew both safe and sound.

My next trip was to the Class 40 AGM in Les Sables d’Olonne on 9th February. I managed to hitch a lift with the guys from Rogers which was a real bonus. Thank you Justin for the driving! The meeting started on Saturday at 1.30pm and finished at 9pm, followed by a dinner organised by the Class. Sunday’s meetings started at 10am with a break for lunch with the Mayor of Les Sables d’Olonne then back to meetings until we left to catch our ferry at 5.30. Pretty full-on for the non-French speakers amongst us. Fortunately the Class had organised a translator and Miranda Merron helped with the technical bits.

The main objective was not to have the twenty two rule changes which were made last year, and after much debating three changes were voted on and passed, the main one being to allow the use of Code Zeros. Thank God for Giovanni Soldini who used his charm, wit and experience to cajole the Class into seeing reason. Some parts of the discussions on Saturday and voting on Sunday were pure comedy with Soldini delivering the perfect punch lines to defuse the arguments! We also voted some new members onto the Committee and I feel the class will move forward and be stronger with Tanguy De La Motte, Halber Marben and Miranda Merron now included.

So, to the future! We are very busy trying to find a sponsor for the Artemis Transat but if we fail I am very keen to do the Brittany Ferries 1000nm race in August. There is also the possibility of doing the Quebec-St Malo Race in July. So still plenty going on with the 40. Jeremy Robinson from North’s has agreed to get the sails sorted out and I am looking forward to sailing the boat again at the end of March.

Race summary

Having had a few weeks away from the boat, I think it’s now about time to reflect on the race.
We thoroughly enjoyed it, but feel we could and should have done better. Having been at the front of the fleet for the first week, our finishing position was a bit disappointing, but at least we made it to Salvador, which was the prime objective.

Rather naively we opted not to take a spinnaker pole and this certainly did not help our downwind speed. All the leading boats used poles and their kites looked a lot more optimised for light airs running. We mistakenly thought that a pole would be unnecessary but this is not the case on these boats. Without one we could not sail as low as the other boats. Now it is hard to tell exactly how much pressure they had, and maybe we always had less, but in 8-10kts of wind a pole would have helped a lot. Being able to sail 5-10 degs lower for 10 days would have made a big difference.

We also felt we had a big hole in our sail inventory; basically from 90 to 125 degs TWA we were very slow. Our Zero is not a Code Zero at all, it is actually a masthead Genoa, which tacks out on the bowsprit about 30cm in front of the stem. What we needed was a Zero which went from the end of the sprit to the masthead and sheeted to the back of the boat. We know a lot of the other boats had these, and on the first night when we saw them unfurled we knew it was going to be a long race for us!

Then we come to the race tactics; this was the main topic of conversation on the boat and in hindsight we should have covered the fleet and not gone with the leading pack. But it is hard to cover the fleet when it fans out so dramatically. At one stage the fleet was spread out over 250 miles. We had got out of sync with the weather and, having recovered from that, we should have taken the loss and gone back to the fleet, possibly losing 40 to 50 miles in the process, but thereby avoiding the hole we sat in west of the Canaries for 36hrs and were never able to recover from. This is easy to say with hindsight!

Finally, the boat. The boat’s sisterships’ performances show what is possible. Hull no. 3, launched only a few weeks before the race, finished in a highly creditable 7th place. We felt the boat was fast in all conditions upwind and close reaching. She is very well balanced and easy to sail. We had no real issues, some chafing on the masthead halyard in 400 miles is not really surprising. Possibly the only small point is the engine box, which is a very tight fit around the engine and the alternator got extremely hot charging in the tropics. We ended up taking the lid off on the hotter days, causing the inside of the boat to become almost unbearably hot.

Considering we had only had a few half days on the water apart from the qualifier, I don’t think we did too badly. A big thank you to Mark W-S for allowing me to charter the boat, to the team at Rogers Yacht design for their help, to Pom Green at CMI for his hard work, and finally to my friends and family for their support and encouragement throughout the project.

Last dash to Salvador…

In the end, we never got the blast-reaching conditions we wanted. The breeze was further forward than we’d expected and as forecast swung aft and built to give us a good run to the finish. There were three boats within 30 miles of us and with a full compliment of kites we may have been able to hunt them down. But as earlier reported, our A3 had retired at Finisterre. We’d re-rigged the masthead halyard, now external, so it was down to the masthead kite to get us to Salvador.

Sadly, the breeze started to build and at 17 knots it too decided that enough was enough. Bugger! We were down to our so-far unused fractional gennaker to get to the finish. Since we had no fractional halyard we flew it from the masthead and the sheeting angle was spot on. Interesting! With a narrow wind range and angle to sail within we relied on the accuracy of the grib files to use the forecast shifts and sail the shortest distance. It was a breezy night at times and we made good time. We gybed at dawn on the shift and the breeze headed us nicely with a good lay line to the finish.

We enjoyed a cracking final day with hot sunshine, blue seas and 20 knots of wind aft of the beam. We crossed the line at 14.40 on Tuesday 27th November after 24 days at sea. Three boats had finished within the previous three hours.

Our reception committee (Gabrielle and Fieldy) arrived in a RIB bearing long-awaited cold beers. As we messed around mooring the boat it was fantastic to see my Mum, who’d made the long trip from Scotland, waiting on the dock. There was a great atmosphere further improved as soon as my feet hit Brazilian soil when the Penduick Race Director thrust a caipirinha into my hand..!
Once the media interviews were done, we headed for the nearest bar. Kenny took control and organised a constant flow of cheeseburgers and cold beer. Sometime later we progressed on to more caipirinhas. Whilst still able to stumble we went to our hotel for a shower (hot!), shave and much-needed clean clothes, before giving the hotel bar an unforgettable hammering..!
The next few days were spent packing up the boat ready for shipping. We had a memorable evening with Peter Harding of 40 Degrees, involving sushi and a huge quantity of caipirinhas! The night ended with a small difference of opinion between Kiwi and the night porter at our hotel, who was trying to deliver a camp bed, but that story may be best left untold…!

Ups and downs…

After a long drag race south to catch up we are now sailing in the same area as about 10 boats, spread over 70 miles. We have been sailing downwind in less than ideal conditions. Sometimes, when the wind is up, we claw back a few miles on the 4hr position reports, but as it drops to below 10 knots we lose them again. We seem to have been stuck around 20th place for days, which is a bit depressing..!

However, a couple of nights ago we had a good breeze and looked forward to moving up but it was not to be. We could not get the boat to go! Every time we put her down a wave, she accelerated then shook furiously and slowed right down. It felt horrible. Twice we dropped the spinnaker and backed her down to remove anything caught on the keel, but it made no difference. ‘Kiwi’ thought that a whale may have damaged the fin when it rubbed against us earlier in the day, but I wasn't sure. Just in case, we put the grab bag and safety pack in the cuddy on deck and carried on trying to race. It was a long night and at dawn we dropped the sails and I went over to take a look. Nothing. Presumably when we stopped and turned the boat around, whatever it was must have slipped off. I checked the underside of the boat to make sure all was well and off we went again. This time she felt fine and we pondered on what it could have been. Still, at least I had a salt water shower on the back of the boat which made me feel so much cleaner and fresher after 16 days at sea. During this messing around we lost very few miles and were still in 20th.

Yesterday was another bad day. We had a good night and took precious miles out of the boats around us. We had seen a lot of cloud activity at night but hadn't realised that the Doldrums extended so far north. ‘Kiwi’ was on watch trying to avoid these squall clouds, but made the mistake of trying to get between two of them. A worried voice called down to me: “Clarkee, get your oilskins on pronto, I need a hand!” The next hour was the classic Doldrums experience. I emerged on deck to be greeted by stair rod rain and ‘Kiwi’ hanging on for grim death with the tiller in one hand and the spinnaker sheet in the other. “Careful mate, she needs a few more turns on the winch!” This was no exaggeration, the wind was in the high 20’s and we had the masthead kite up doing 17-18 knots. With our heading of 300 degrees, in zero visibility, monsoon rain and with the boat on the limit of control, it was all we could do to just ride it out. We couldn't risk dropping the kite in that much wind, there may not have been much to gather if we had! Mind you, it was our best sailing we for a while! Eventually the wind began to ease. We dropped the kite and pulled out the Solent jib to get back on course. As the squall passed we were becalmed for hours, slowly getting sailing again by about 5pm. We lost all the hard won miles through one small mistake, but still we were in 20th place..?

Last night was a great night. A good breeze, pointing at the mark, good cloud avoidance and we were sure the morning scores would be better. Once again I was down below asleep when there was a massive ‘bang’. The boat came upright and stopped dead. “S**t!” The kite halyard had chaffed and broken. We dragged it back onboard and unrolled the code zero. It happened so quickly and with the expected shift in the wind we would have changed to this sail within a few hours anyway. I believe we’re now moving up the field and hope that we can shrug off this persistent 20th that seems to have been dogging us for days..!

(Editor’s Note to Clarkee: At 12:00 on 22/11, you were showing as 17th, 0.3 miles behind Pindar 40 and within two miles of Merci Les Amis and Leclerc Ville La Grand) Believe me, we’ve been trying our hardest but the breaks haven't come our way. The boats around us have been flat out as well and after 3,000nm we’re still having some great racing. We’re now 300 miles north of the equator which is our next objective. ‘Kiwi’ hasn't crossed before so maybe Neptune will pay us a visit! Time to brave the sun on deck for my watch now, a welcome relief from the sizzling temperature at the Nav station. Boy, could we do with a cold one or two…!

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