Armour piercing Swiss

James Boyd caught up with Around Alone leg one winner Bernard Stamm

One of the last times I met Bernard Stamm was in Les Sables d’Olonne just before the start of the 2000/1 Vendee Globe. His Open 60, a design by Pierre Rolland who had previous created his Mini, was in chaos. It had been launched late, qualified late and Stamm was crawling around the rabbit warren-like accommodation (his boat seems to have more bulkheads in it than an aircraft carrier) making last minute alterations, some minor, some far from minor.

Seeing the same boat again in Newport, Rhode Island before the start of Around Alone, almost two years on, the contrast could not have been more different. His boat, now known as Armor Lux-Bobst Group after his sponsors (the former is a clothing manufacturer, the latter make packaging) seemed to be thoroughly sorted and this combined with Stamm’s past form prompted us to put the amiable Swiss skipper down as line honours favourite in this race.

Stamm was certainly favourite for this first leg eastbound across the North Atlantic. After he was forced to pull out of the Vendee Globe with irreconcilable autopilot problems he had headed for the States. From here in February last year he set off on an attempt to break the west to east transatlantic monohull record, held by the somewhat larger Mari Cha III. He succeeded in beating the 147ft ketch’s record, setting a new time for the 2,925 mile course of 8 days 20 hours 55 minutes and 35 seconds.

Leaving New York on the 15 September this time, Stamm says his tactics were to hit the race course at speed. “In the Atlantic crossing from west to east you go with the system, and if you are the first to catch the wind, you keep the wind for longer and it is stronger. So for me the objective was to go as fast as I could do on the two first days.”

The tactics paid off and by the time the boats were passing to the south of Newfoundland he and Thierry Dubois were sailing their own race. Getting a longer, stronger ride out into the Atlantic then allowed them to be first to pick up a ride on another system giving them northwesterlies to take them across to the other. The secret, Stamm says, of these early stages of the race is not to be tempted too far to the north of the rhumb line by more favourable weather conditions.

A week into the race as they were past Newfoundland and heading out into the Atlantic conditions began to deteriorate as a low pressure system passed to the north of them.

“We had a load of wind in the low pressure, it was up to 40 knots,” said Stamm. “But it was downwind – it was special high speed - so it was okay.” The conditions gave the skippers their first taste of something similar to what they can expect when they head out into the Southern Ocean on leg three.

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