Mini transat on a multihull

Greg Homann tells us of the potential horrors of his imminent crossing on a modified Marstrom 20

18ft skiff turned cat sailor Greg Homann is to set off today on what he says is likely to be his greatest challenge in a 20 year sailing career that has included three wins in the 18ft Skiff Grand Prix Sailing series, a 24 hour record on Tracy Edwards' Maiden maxi-cat, to sailing around the world non-stop in the Oryx Quest.

At present Homann, 45, is in Las Palmas on Gran Canaria readying himself for a solo crossing of the Atlantic on board a highly modified Marström 20 cat. In 2004 Homann had made a similar attempt on the Atlantic crossing to Guadeloupe aboard an F18 that resulted in his having to be rescued.

“It all went pear-shaped and I had to be rescued, but I learned a lot from it and I enjoyed it,” says Homann, who like Volvo turned Figaro sailor Liz Wardley originates from Papua New Guinea. “I was just doing a training run and I got the weather wrong. Instead of getting 25-35 knots I had 45, which was a bit much...”

Times have moved on and after several seasons campaigning VX40s and racing the Archipelago Raid this year with Ellen MacArthur, Homann is back on board his own racing cat, this time one of the lithe all-carbon uber-Tornados, the Marström 20.

“It is just to do something a bit different I think,” says Homann when we enquire what as to the attraction of the record attempt. “I have always wanted to do some solo sailing, so this is the first step I suppose and see how it goes and if I like it I’ll see if I can do some more.”




The Marström 20 is very much more sophisticated than the F18 he used on his previous attempt. The hulls are modified with watertight bulkheads in them for stowage and the rig is dumbed down, replaced by a smaller one off a Tornado, the set-up including two spinnakers (large and small) on Karver roller furlers and a spinnaker pole with two carbon fibre struts that hold it up, the tack for each can be pulled back to the mast.

“The Tornado rig has got a mast track on it so I can put four reefs in the main and the boom has got lazyjacks, that float on the mast," says Homann. "And I have got a righting pole so that if it does capsize I can arm over arm out to the end of it and pull it back up, even with no wind at all, which is the hardest time to right a multihull. And I’ve put racks on it, so I am away from the water.”

Obviously living on board such a boat for a prolonged period will be a struggle with no protection from the wind, waves or sun and there is no facility to cook. “I have just got lots of fruit and dried nuts and cheese and sausages. I have tried to keep it as simple as possible so that there are less things to go wrong.” All of the food is stowed within the watertight compartments in the hulls.

As to water, Homann says he’ll take 20 litres in bottles. “I’ll get through 3 litres per day and I have a watermaker with me as well. It is quite good. It is a Survivor 35 and it will give you 4.5lts/hour and there is no effort in it at all, it is just monotonous doing it. It works really well. I got two of them off the Maiden project. Tracy [Edwards] did give them to me!”

Sleep could be a significant issue too, particularly if it blows up. Homann says that he has two options: to sleep on the racks or on the trampoline. “The only thing is that if you sleep on the rack you end up on the boom or the main [if you capsize] which is not good. You end up hurting yourself and breaking the boat. The idea is to sleep on the trampoline on an air mattress and a cover that are waterproof. At night you’ll sleep in your dry suit, just roll down the top and keep the bottoms on. During the day I can get out of the dry suit even when it is 20 knots, because when I am out on the rack I don’t get wet at all. The idea is that at night when I suspect I’m going to be cold I’ll put the dry suit on and during the day I’ll try and take it off and sleep under the boom to keep out of the sun. I have been out sailing here in 15-18 knots in T-shirt and shorts with no problem.”

When he is sleeping the boat will continue to sail along under autopilot. He has a Simrad T32 ram attached to the tiller bar joining the two tillers, but this is a basic unit and he has no wind input for it - it simply steers to a compass course. “The autopilot works really well. So I’ll reduce the sail area quite significantly I suppose and just sleep every now and then and then pull the sails up and keep going…” At night he can switch on a strobe at the top of the mast to indicate his position.

Obviously with food, racks and all the mods, it might seem that the boat has put on colossal weight, however Homann says that normally the Marström 20 is sailed two up and as he is going solo, the extra paraphernalia weighs less than 80kg, or the weight of an addition crew.

“The standard M20 is 115kg, so it is not very heavy at all. And I have added another 20-25 kg in modifications. The racks are about 8kg each. So it is not a lot. With food and water and the mods, it is still within the design parameters of the boat which is what I was trying to do.”

Because of this Homann says he hasn’t had to beef up the structure of the boat. “It is a really strong stiff boat. I have been up at Marström and been firing questions at Goran and he’s been helping me out a lot with the structure, redesigning the boom and the spinnaker pole. I’ve gone through all the questions and it is fine. I take his word for it.”

As to the conditions, Homann says he is ideally looking for 10-16 knots, but the boat can handle 25, although it is not safe to sail it fast singlehanded in this amount of breeze. “I’ve been up at Marström off and on for about four months now. And I’ve had the boat in the water for three months up in Sweden just training on it and getting it all sorted. Then I drove it all the way down here, got the ferry across from Cadiz and the boat’s ready to go!"

The course runs between Las Palmas and Guadeloupe, a distance of around 2,600 miles. The present record, set last year by Matteo Miceli, stands at 14 days 17 hours and 52 minutes. Oddly Italians seem to have the market cornered in small catamaran Atlantic crossings - the original cat record on this course was initially set by Alessandro Di Benedetto, who took a leisurely 28 days 11 hours and 36 minutes in 2002. In comparison Homann says he thinks it is possible to cover the course in 12 days.

“In 16 knots I can sit on 18-20 knots on the boat," he says. "The hardest thing by far is sailing at night, because I don’t have any wind instruments. I just have a backlit compass and that’s it. Ideally I wanted to go last week, because the full moon was on the 12 December.”

Key will obviously be the weather as well as Homann’s ability to keep the boat in one piece. To help him with this, he has an Iridium phone on board and has lined up Commander’s Weather to route him.

For this record there will be no support (part of the deal with this record is that it is unassisted) and Homann draws the comparison with a helicopter shadowing someone on an Everest ascent (if it were possible). “With this record it has to be unassisted so you can’t have any support. It is a different record if you have a boat going along behind you. It wouldn’t be the same. It would be like climbing an Everest with a helicopter following you. I think this will be the hardest thing I’ll ever do sailing-wise. The main objective is to get there in one piece. If I break the record then it is fantastic. This project has been 18 months of hard work. I don’t have a title sponsor. I did have a guy who was going to invest, but he pulled out, so it has been pretty tough.”

Certainly Homann has no shortage of skill and experience to pull off a crossing of this type and with Commander's Weather pointing him in the right direction along with the ability to track him via his www.solo-atlantic.com site, hopefully he can lay the demons from his previous attempt to rest.

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