News Around the World


straight up into the air. Lightning all night. Lot of crews seasick. Seas all over, with a couple of knots of current going south adding to the complication.’ And so it went, plenty of transition zones to negotiate as one weather system gave way to the next. Hard yakka, as they say in these parts and certainly challenging two-handed in a 30-footer. Having negotiated most of the course with realistic hopes of a


podium in the two-handed division, it all came undone on the final approaches to Hobart. Off the Tasman Peninsula they were down to a staysail and two reefs in a building southwesterly and big seas. ‘We tacked inshore to try to find some flatter water to put in a third reef,’ Michel explains. ‘In the process a jammer stripped the cover off the staysail halyard, releasing about 3m of line. We had to turn downwind to get the staysail under control, but now it was whipping around in 25-30kt winds.’ Now the stainless steel swivel at the head of the staysail furler


was lashing about like a wrecking ball. ‘Eventually the swivel slammed into the main and punched a hole right through it. It was as if a cannon ball had been fired through the sail, but we were really for- tunate it missed the mast as it would have shattered the carbon rig.’ Reduced to storm jib and three reefs, the pair went into survival


mode in 40kt squalls and 4-5m swells – topped by 2-3m wind-waves for good measure. ‘By the time we slogged too close for comfort


bars, but there comes a time when the boat is about vertical on its side and you can’t hang on. Both of us got thrown off the high side a couple of times. We are going to have to figure out some other solution – maybe a harness of some sort to hold you in place.’ A mini boat’s summer that will be long remembered for its mighty


adventures and achievements. Ivor Wilkins


SPAIN Heroes of Silence Shortly before Christmas Federico Waksman of Uruguay and Carlos Manera of Spain received a tribute at the Mini Barcelona Base where both trained in their 2023 Mini Transat projects. The directors of the Catalan Sailing Federation and Barcelona Capital Foundation, which collaborated with the Base Project led by Anna Corbella, were smiling. Laughing and satisfied, Mini skipper Corbella wanted to stay in the background but she was the happiest of all, happier even than Fede and Carlos – winner and runner-up respectively in the 2023 Mini Transat in the Proto Division… No wonder they were smiling. ‘It is fantastic, a reward and demonstration of the value of a training


centre here in Barcelona,’ Corbella said proudly. ‘Carlos and Fede, Fede and Carlos, are two sailors with a lot of talent who put great effort into their projects. We must congratulate them because they raced the Mini Transat with an intensity never before seen in this transatlantic. They are competitive beasts!’ Both have things in common, although their characters are dif-


ferent. Clearly both have the killer instinct necessary to compete at the highest level successfully. And because both have no sponsors they also share the uncertainty of the immediate sporting future…


Fede Waksman, the first foreigner to beat the French! ‘I started competing in Snipes, then after I finished my engineering degree I spent a year ashore backpacking! I wanted to see places – when you go racing you don’t know anything about the places you sail. At the end of this journey a friend called me to help him on a Swan 80 and then a Swan 90, spending three years with them. ‘I learned about the Minis because I helped a friend who bought


Small boat, big and nasty ocean. Marc Michel and his co-skipper Logan Fraser beat across Storm Bay to Hobart on their little Dehler 30 One Design Niksen. There is growing competition in the market for 30-foot shorthanders but Niksen’s reliability and performance in a rough Hobart will have done the already good reputation of this very nice-looking Vrolijk design no harm at all


around Tasman Island and into the protection of Storm Bay any chance of a podium was lost. Of the 10 Sydney-Hobarts I have completed it was definitely the toughest by far. It certainly wasn’t the race to be the smallest boat.’ Of 18 starters in the two-handed division, five retired. Niksen


finished sixth on the water and fifth on IRC. But Michel was impressed with how their Dehler 30 stood up to the conditions. The design was part of a flurry of production boats in this size range in response to the since abandoned proposal for an Olympic offshore event. ‘We pushed the boat beyond its limits, but it was great – fantastic


at sea,’ he says. Modifications for the race included carbon taping all the bulkheads and improving the hatch seals, both of which proved themselves in the conditions. ‘We have one small crack in a bulkhead and we tipped out two buckets of water throughout the entire race. Bigger boats were arriving in Hobart without functioning engines or electronics and a lot of water below. All our systems were fine.’ But Michel was left with a heavy limp after Fraser was flung across


the cockpit and landed on his leg, hyper-extending the knee. In common with many two-handed competitors, they both had massive bruising on their upper arms from hanging onto the guardrails and stanchions to stay on the high side. ‘The boats get to an angle where it is just impossible to hang on,’ says Michel. ‘We have good foot


26 SEAHORSE


a Pogo 2. I borrowed that for a while then I bought a Pogo 3 to race the Mini Transat in 2021. I started the first stage well but there were problems and they stopped the stage in Galicia. I was very angry with the organisation, how they handled the situation. In the second leg I chose the north option and south was faster!’ SH: And second time… FW: I started with the FNOB’s La Nona project, a design by Sam Manuard that was built in Barcelona, but suddenly my mother became seriously ill and I returned to Uruguay to care for her during her treat- ment. When I returned I didn’t have enough time to prepare the boat safely, so I was thinking about giving up the Mini Transat when a friend told me about some well-prepared boats that were available. My second call was to 2021 winner Pierre Leroy and he told me


that I was a good option to leave his boat in good hands! They wanted to sell it to me but I couldn’t pay for it, nor did I have the money to rent it! Eventually they reduced the rent as a way of sponsoring me. Then I got the support of several Uruguayan companies and was able to start the campaign. SH: A good boat, right? FW: Yes, it was the winner of the previous edition and one of eight boats this time to the same design by David Raison. In light and medium winds it is not very fast, as her design is now quite old. But in strong winds she is good. So for 2023 I knew I would have to push a lot and risk breakages, because I would have seven identical boats to beat as well as three new foiler prototypes like Carlos’s (Manera). I also only had less than a year until the start, when two or even


three years of preparation are advisable for this race. I settled in Lorient to be closer to the French regattas, and also to get into a group with a coach who knows this design well (after training Leroy in 2021). His contribution helped me a lot. Curiously, though, Carlos was also able to sneak into the group! It was a delicate situation, because in some ways I served Carlos as a ‘hare’ to optimise his 


RICHARD BENNETT


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