Catamaran technique - part 4

Leading Dutch sailor Hans Bouscholte on his approach to long distance cat racing

Hans Bouscholte is one of the most outstanding long-distance cat sailors of our times. He holds the Round Texel record, with a time of 2 hours, 30 minutes and 9 seconds around the Dutch island, which has become somewhat of a Mecca for catamaran racers. Perhaps more impressively, the Dutchman holds the record for crossing the Atlantic in a 20-foot open catamaran. He still has the scars from his passage four years ago from Dakar to Guadeloupe which, together with French sailing partner Gerard Navarin, he completed in 15 days and 2 hours.

He also became the first non-Frenchman to win the Tour Voile, and he was skipper of the Dutch Whitbread 60 Brunel Sunergy . But here, Hans Bouscholte shares some of his hard-earned experience in long-distance cat sailing.



Preparation

Before any long-distance event in a small cat, it’s vital to get a lot of training. You need to learn how to sail the boat at night, which is pretty hard. Sailing a beach cat for four or five hours is fun, but when you sail for 15 hours, that’s when the fun disappears and it becomes hard work.

I can think of one experienced Tornado sailor, who went out sailing from Palamos, and went out sailing for one night and said ‘never again’. You must do a training run to make sure that you are suited to this style of racing. It is not something to be taken lightly.

Note also that when you pack a small cat with a lot of safety gear and food, it completely alters the hull stability of the boat. When we had the boat for the ocean crossing, we couldn’t right it. If we’d have capsized it, the race would have been over. So do your training with the same gear that you’ll be racing with, and then you’ll understand the problems that may arise.

Mental preparation

We had a mental trainer for the transatlantic crossing. We did a lot preparation on the mental side, to make sure we would work well with each other. We put ourselves in stressful situations, doing some mountain climbing and police work, and we did some cat training during the winter in Holland, when the temperature was minus 5degC, and we sailed for 48 hours, with our hands absolutely freezing. Our trainer would put us in situations to try to break our nerve and make us fight each other. And the training worked, because for the whole crossing we never had arguments and never shouted. You must have 100 per cent confidence in your crew. If you’re sleeping while he’s helming in the middle of the ocean, then you must have absolute faith in your team mate.

Pace yourself

If you come from an inshore racing background, it’s important to pace yourself for the longer races. My crew Gerard had never crossed an ocean before our transatlantic passage. He was trimming hard for the first four or five days, but after that he had to relent a little. We slept just an hour a day so it is impossible to keep up that level of commitment. During the day we sailed at 70-80% speed and 60% at night. During light airs we pushed at 100% and 90% at night. In the light winds we didn’t sleep, we just kept on sailing. When the wind was stronger we didn’t use the spinnaker, we would look for good average speeds while sailing within our limits.

Body protection

We use breathable drysuits, Musto HPX, and I still use mine now. Four years later it’s still perfect. You should have breathable shoes, otherwise your feet will suffer, and breathable gloves. We used neoprene gloves and I had bad infections on my hands, because the neoprene meant they were always wet. What you need are GoreTex gloves.

We always covered our face with sun cream. You should always wear a hat, too, and cover your hands and feet. The moment you have a wound it will get bigger, not better, in that environment. Our hands were in such a bad state by the end of the 15 days that we could see the bones. So take clothing seriously.



Photo: Jon Nash

Food & water

We took freeze-dried food. Variety is important, but the biggest problem we had was that we had no heater, so we had to eat the freeze-dried stuff cold. For dire emergencies, we took some American Army meals, but they are heavy so we only took three for each crew member. You pull a tag and they have a self-heating device. So when we encountered a 30-hour storm we used them and had a hot meal, which was great. Once we’d had the meal, we used the hot containers for putting in our clothes and helping us stay warm for two or three hours afterwards. We also allowed ourselves one cup of coffee a day, which we had each night. You push in the tab and they heat up. These little luxuries really help your spirits. For making water, we had a desalinator. You had to pump it for half an hour to get one litre of water, so it was very hard work. But it worked, and the water was healthy.

Equipment

Always take a knife. If you capsize you need a knife to cut your wires or trapeze harness. I almost drowned in Carnac when my trapeze hook got stuck in a block.

Take a handheld GPS unit, in fact take two. We use the Meridian GPS units with charts and colour screens, and they’re very good for the job.

Take an EPIRB, not one of the 121.5 Mhz units, but a more expensive 501 version. Basically you want a satellite EPIRB, rather than airport-based. The moment you have a very bad emergency, you trigger it and it goes via satellite to the Rescue Coordination Centres. It’s their responsibility to find you and co-ordinate the whole rescue operation.

A good compass is essential. We had a Tacktick RaceMaster Compass, a solar-powered electronic unit.

Torches are waste of time for night sailing, better to sail by feel.

Take spares. We took a spare rudder, and lots of battens. After 3,000 miles of the crossing, we discovered that one shroud had seven out of its 10 elements broken. We were very lucky the mast hadn’t falled down. We never went up the mast to check, but I think we should have done.

More photos of Hans Bouschulte's transat crossing on the following pages...