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Leg 1: September 22nd - October 4th

I crossed the finish line on Thursday the 4th of October at 6:30 pm GMT. Entering the marina, there was a crowd to welcome me back. It is always a magic moment to see all the friends, to communicate about all the good and bad times of the race. And even the tough times becomes good. And when the first emotion was calming down, just before going for dinner, they told me the sad news, that Roberto Varinelli, the skipper of the boat 173, was lost at sea. It was a shock. Participating in offshore racing on small boats like ours, we know and accept this risk. Sometimes we don't think about it but only about the boat performance and it is a tough comeback to reality when loosing a friend. This tragic event will not change the way I sail as I already do everything possible to improve safety and avoid such accidents.

Below are details about my first leg.

Saturday 22, departure day and major fiasco right at the beginning

The departure was given on Saturday the 22 of September. The departure line was a few miles off La Rochelle and we had to go around a buoy close to shore so the spectators could see the boats. Just after this buoy, it was down wind condition all the way to cap Finistere (Spain). I had my spinnaker ready to hoist, but as there were too many spectator boats around, I decided to wait a little to hoist it. So I went to close back the spinnaker bag and I made a huge mistake. I did not notice that the bag was not closed properly and going back to the cockpit, I suddenly saw my spinnaker being dragged to the sea. It went around the starboard rudder and got stuck in it. After ten minutes trying to take it out, I had to take the decision to dismount the rudder to get the spinnaker free: Not an easy operation at sea and very time consuming too. When I finally got my spinnaker out, there was a big hole in it so I had to use my small spinnaker for the next 2 hours until I fixed the light one. That put me some 15 miles behind the leaders. I was mad about that and decided to risk everything to come back and take the lead. For the night, the weather forecast predicted wind up to 30 knots with gusts up to 40. I spent all night under small spinnaker. The boat was bouncing on the water, I lost a few times the control of the boat and took down the spinnaker as quickly as possible to avoid breaking everything, and hoisted it back right after. The following day, I was first of my class and only 4 protos where in front of me. I had broken a few things during the night but nothing I could not fix. I was back in the game and ready to keep the lead.

Monday 24—Tuesday 25

During the night, the wind fell to 5 knots but the swell was still big making sailing very hard. Then slowly, the wind shifted to South-West, so exactly where we had to go. To tack around the Cap Finistere is rather difficult as the sea can be rough and the wind can shift a lot. Unfortunately, I did not have local knowledge of this place, and in the wind condition we had, it was better to sail extremely close to the shore. So I lost the lead and the entire advance (20 miles) I had.

Wednesday 26—Friday 28

The wind was now South and picking up rapidly. A low pressure was coming, so I decided to sail to the west to go towards this low pressure and the front. Sailing on the port tack was not the fastest one as I was sailing around 60 degrees off but it was better to lose a little now and gain a lot later. The front was pretty active with very strong wind and very heavy rain but the wind shift associated with the front gave me the possibility to sail straight towards the Canaries. I came back in front of Michel but another competitor, Loic Lebras took the lead. I did not care too much, as I was pretty sure that my west position was a good one and that I was going to take the lead. During the strong head wind, the sea was very rough and the beating was terrible. It was so bad that the gas cooker I had in the boat broke. That was really bad news for me as most of my food was dehydrated food. So for the next ten days I had to eat dehydrated food prepared with cold water. Not good for the morale!

Sunday 30—Tuesday 2

Around mid day, I saw a boat in front of me. I was sailing much faster than him. Two hours later I passed Loic and came back first in the race. At this time we were still sailing against the wind. But in the following days, the weather conditions became very confused with a high pressure blocking the way to the Canaries. In addition to this complex weather, we had a major piece of information missing. Meteo France, the organism making the weather forecast in France was on strike. So we stopped receiving the weather news. This was terrible for us. I could see that there was a high pressure in front of me from the atmospheric pressure, the wind and the sky. But I did not know where it was centered and what was the pressure in the middle. So looking at the pressure I had, I could not know how far I was from the center and this is a critical piece of information as in the center, there is no wind at all. I was also unsure of where to go: to the east to catch down wind or to the west to be up wind (a longer distance but better if the wind is very light). So with the very limited information we had, it was not possible to say which route was the best and it was mainly luck to be on the good side. Another point which annoyed me was that the competitors I had left far behind were coming back quickly on us as they still had wind. So most of the advance we had disappeared. I did not particularly enjoy this part of the race, with very little wind to no wind at all, big swells making the sails flap continuously, no possibility to sleep as the wind kept on shifting. In one night, the wind turned twice 360 degrees. I kept on changing sails, genoa, gennaker, and spinnaker. In 48 hours I slept only 4 times 20 minutes. I started to hear voices, to fall down on the boat and had no choice than to go for 2 straight hours of sleep knowing that more likely the boat would not be sailing right for so long. The only relief was that the other competitors were certainly in the same state of exhaustion.

Wednesday 3—Thursday 4

Michel and Loic started to take the advantage so I guessed they had more wind and tried to sail more towards the East in the hope that the wind was better over there. I guessed they were more to the East than me as we seemed to finally come out of this high pressure and the wind started to shift to the North. The wind was not blowing the same everywhere. I think I was quite unlucky in this game as I found some good wind, but only after Michel and Loic, and did not manage to come back on them. In those types of conditions, a good indication of wind is the clouds. They were in line with blue sky between. So I kept changing from one of these cloud lanes to another, trying to find good wind. Finally, I stopped sailing to the East to make a direct route to Lanzarote. Michel and Loic were only a few miles off me and had wind twice as strong. But a little more to the East, the conditions were the same as mine. The trick is to find one of these cloud lanes and stay in it. So I finished third, 3 minutes behind Loic and 4 hours and half behind Michel. So I am still in the game to win the race.