The road to recovery

The Daily Sail talks to Emma Richards about leg 1 of Around Alone

A combination of these sail issues, both related to pushing too hard, and the weather favouring the frontrunner, resulted in Pindar falling back into a resounding last place in class one. "The guys at the front continued on the best system," explains Richards. "The guys in the middle section still had the best of that system long after I'd fallen off the back of it and was sitting in no wind swearing at myself. At worst I was 150 miles behind the next last boat and 500 miles behind Bernard.

"So then I thought I've just to learn as much as I can and get to Brixham, have a rethink. I've got to start behaving myself a bit more in terms of sail area. The thing is I wouldn't have kept up the sail that long if it wasn't for Solidaires. I was just so competitive. If I was on my own I would have just taken it down. But there was that boat just there and that competitive streak just pushes you over the limit. So I learned my lesson good and proper."

However Richards had a break. A high pressure system moving over the UK pushed a depression in the Atlantic south and Richards was able to duck beneath it. "We had strong strong winds of up to 45 knots for ages. But it was almost stationary for a while and I managed to get under the low pressure and I was in the better position, more south."

Slowly during this time she pulled up on her competitors , overtaking Bruce Schwab and with Graham Dalton in her sights. It was then that she pulled off her master stroke.

"I got to within 4 miles of Dalton, when I made the decision to tack south - I made one mile towards to mark in a four hour period - it was really demoralising because Dalton had just taken 30 miles out of me again, but I knew I had to be that little bit further south, to have the edge over the others." And it worked.

To the south the wind was both stronger and was from the south east rather than due east and it also lined her up better with the English Channel. "Just that 30 miles extra that I did was enough to put me into a fantastic position. And I straight lined it more or less all the way in while the other guys were tacking. So I was pleased about that!"

The result was that Richards pulled up to fourth place and very nearly took third. In the end she crossed the finish line off Brixham precisely 13 minutes after third placed Patrick de Radigues aboard Garnier.

Aside from learning the hard way that singlehanded offshore racing is about playing the long game she was pleased with the outcome. She has been developing how she sails the boat, issues like how best to use the water ballast.

Continued on page 4...