The breeze fills in again after a first night spent drifting back and forth in 60m of water unable to anchor. The old-school 300m reel of 5mm Spectra for deep water kedging might still be handy in the IRC fleet but Imoca sailors do not really gear up for all the possible eventualities of a coastal course. And of course pulling it up is a bitch… let alone shorthanded
A Vendée amuse-bouche
Sam Davies finally got to try Initiatives Coeur’s mega-foils in earnest during Fastnet 2019...
‘Sam – quick – the front’s here and it’s too much for the J2!!!’ came the cry from on deck. To be honest I wasn’t asleep, as the adrenalin caused by the violent motion of a foiling Imoca on the edge of its limit at 30- 33kt boat speed was keeping me well in tune with the situation. But I was trying to rest. I struggled out of my bean-bag perched
on the windward ballast tank carefully, as moving anywhere at these speeds requires the utmost caution to avoid being launched off balance and injured. Then rushed on deck to furl the J2 and unfurl the J3. We were in the front, halfway across the Irish Sea, in second place behind Charal… The start canon had fired only 24 hours
earlier. The 20-boat double-handed Imoca fleet had an early start, second away after the multihulls, which was a wise decision by the race director because our boats are not really designed for close boat-on-boat racing inshore and being two-handed just makes this more of a challenge. I was very glad not to have to negotiate our way through the smaller boats on the way out of the Solent. My project has the unique position of
raising money and awareness for a chil- dren’s charity, and communication is important – I had the double challenge of doing a ‘Facebook Live’ as well as skipper- ing a top foiler safely off the line. The first 10 minutes of the FB live were proudly
broadcast upside down until someone kindly pointed out my mistake and I managed to flip the smartphone the right way up just before the start!! I will make it as a ‘media-man’ one day. The wind gods were also kind to us
double-handers by giving us a reach out of the Solent and avoiding a 5,000-calorie tacking session in the first two hours (thank you!). We were then handed the difficult decision to pass through the Needles or North Channel – being in the top three, we chose the North Channel as we weren’t sure of making it out of the Needles with the sail we had chosen. Luckily for us we weren’t the leading
boat in the North Channel: Apicil kindly marked the edge of the Shingles Bank so we could steer safely round her and head out to sea. I breathed a sigh of relief and realised I have spent too much time with the French and was very close to joining the SW Shingles Yacht Club – too close. I promised myself I will never, ever laugh at anyone again (even if they are French) stuck on the Shingles after our near-miss. The Imoca fleet were fired out of the
Solent and as the wind built we accelerated away. Onboard Initiatives Coeur we settled into a rhythm of trimming, getting the latest weather files and tracking our rivals. The conditions were fast but relatively
easy. We are learning heaps with our new foils so we were constantly trying different trim set-ups to maximise boat speed and improve performance – especially around the point that lift-off occurs when speed jumps by 3kt almost instantaneously.
It was also time to eat and drink and
make the most of the flat conditions as the rest of the race was not going to be so clement. I made sandwiches, we ate fruit, and we even got a moment to savour a nice coffee from the Jetboil. The first night then became a bit of a
challenge for our fleet: trapped in very light winds with a strong spring tide against us, we struggled to hold station and most of us ended up going backwards over the ground. In more than 60m of water we judged that anchoring was not an option, so now the goal was to go back- wards more slowly than the others. We attempted to keep our minds off a stressful situation by trying to depict what we were drawing on the tracker, hoping that it would resemble a heart! It is hard to rest when there is no wind,
but knowing what was ahead of us we forced each other to take 30-60 minute naps from time to time, mixing that with us both on deck to confirm our trim set-up and to make strategic decisions together. Again making the most of the calm to cook up a nice freeze-dried meal and take time to eat it without redecorating ourselves and the inside of the boat (which is what normally happens once sailing at speed.) The following morning we found the
wind, and the fleet, funnelled back together and all the different options seemed to converge with the exception of Pip Hare and Paul Larsen who had mas- tered the first night way better than any- one and steamed into the lead with her old boat Super Bigou – hats off to them!
SEAHORSE 55
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