Tales from the TJV

Team Cowes breaks into the Trades - Nick Moloney has a wash

"You're talking to Mr Smooth now instead of Mr Stinky," is Nick Moloney's opening gambit when we get him on line today. He and Sam Davies have carried out their first ablutions of the Transat Jacques Vabre today and their individual spring cleaning has extended beyond their rotting bodies to their 60ft long steed too.

"We went through the whole boat," says Moloney. "As soon as Sam got up this morning we went into the bow and emptied all the water out to make sure the boat was completely dry all round. We had a diesel spill in the back and cleaned all that out and ended up consequently covered in diesel and all the rest and obviously made sure we had every bit of sail area up we possibly could."

At the time of our conversation Team Cowes was just edging into the Trades and he and Davies were waiting for the wind to shift before they gybed. "We have the breeze from the northeasterly direction at 030 approx. We are looking for 040 to gybe on. We are still heading southwest. We are probably 10-15 miles from Sill’s line as she passed down here. We are the only ones on such an acute southwesterly course at the moment. We are poised for a gybe any minute. Meeno [Schrader - their router] has asked us to hang on for another hour or so. So we are biting our nails a little bit here. We have everything up - spinnaker, spinnaker staysail, mainsail and our new secret water sail that we’ve had built prior to this, that is working really well. We just want to get gybing and heading in the same direction as everyone else."

Er - water sail? "We call it a watersail. We wanted to make it in the Whitbread but we didn’t because we would have had to measure it as one sail. There is not much to it - it is a massive end plate for the bottom of the main. On these boats the clew end of boom skys quite high. It always frustrated me. So we decided to knock one up - it probably cost us about 60 Euros! And the thing is a weapon.



A hard day at the office

"If we could start taking some scalps and find some form, we are thinking we might start drumming up this story about a new hellbent new beaut sail we’ve been testing for the Vendee. Developed particularly for the Trades!"

Moloney describes it as looking like an Egyptian sail attaching to the bottom of the boom and sheeting to the aft quarter. "We are really surprised. I was coming up with weird ones like this particularly in the Whitbread and everyone takes the piss a bit. It is good to knock one up and when we put it up we were having a bit of giggle about how well it worked.

"All these flying sails, like staysails and stuff I don’t believe in them until you have a good drawing gradient, something like 11-12 knots of true wind speed and this has been the first time we have had broad angles and that amount of wind. So it was time to bring them out."

In 10-13 knots of breeze Team Cowes at the time of our conversation was doing 10 knots. "We are cruising along, but we aren’t stonking that is for sure and we can see from the files that there is 20 knots of breeze in the southeast - so we need to get there along with everyone else so we don’t miss out on the fun stuff." Moloney expected to be feeling the full force of the northeasterly Trades by tonight.

On board the temperature is rising as they head south. "We don’t have a lot of sun, which was something we are looking forward to because we are not 100% sure on our fuel levels at the moment. So we’ve been trying to sail around in all the blue patches! [in order to charge the batteries via the solar panels] Down below it is noticeably warmer. On deck there is still a little bit of chill in the air. We have long sleeve T-shirts on so it is not that scorching tradewind sailing yet - no doubt that is to come."

Obviously Moloney is sailing with Sam Davies, a girl, and we are interested to see if this makes it any different from sailing as he did on this boat in this race two years with a man. Moloney says he has to be on slightly better behaviour but otherwise the differences are slight.

"When Mark [Turner] and I came down here last time it was very similar - we didn’t spend much time discussing anything else other than the weather and what the consequences over the next four hours would be. And we do that: you seem to trade places - on deck to down below, on deck to down below - and you have that brief cross over period of 30-45 minutes where you sit and discuss what the plan of attack is.

"So in this case, there really aren’t any differencies. Obviously I’m fortunate that Sam is a good sailor. That would be the most noticeable difference - if your partner wasn’t carrying their weight. So their sex is completely irrelevant. We are here to win the race and do the best we can. If one person doesn’t carry their weight then even if they are a 6ft 10in 180kg guy it is useless to us. Sam is a really good yachtie and we are both here and motivated towards the same objective, so we just get on with it."

Moloney says there aren't even any jobs which either of them have proved themselves to excell at over the other. "I’m sure there is a strength issue. That’s not me pumping my weight and saying I’m Mr Superman or anything, but Sam is in there trying her guts out and always running up the front to help me out on the foredeck and I have sailed with blokes who are bigger and stronger who I haven’t got half that effort out of.

"I don’t know where else one is stronger than the other. I think in the breezy stuff on the wind, then we lent a bit on my previous knowledge of the boat because we’d never sailed in those conditions before together and Sam hadn’t sailed an Open 60 before let alone upwind in 45 knots. Otherwise we are pretty compatible on the weather and nav side of things and we are very similar sailors, similar approach to trim element, etc.

"I am not trying to make it all sound rosy. I think we have been lucky because this trip could be a right pain if you went down the road with someone you weren’t 100% happy with. We have been very very lucky that the team unit has been compatible."

With the front runners now out into the Trades, the next few days are likely to become a drag race. "Everyone will fall into a bit of a line and then we may see some difference of opinion on the approach to the Doldrums. From here on we start to plan on our crossing of the Doldrums. Ourselves and Sill will still have westerly leverage, which is good when you are trying to find a gap, provided you are still in the same amount of true wind as the other guys have got. The general trade is northeasterly and if we are approaching from the west we have got that little bit more angle on port gybe to take a bit more heat and speed. Commonly the further west you are when you are trying to cross the Doldrums there is the chance of a better crossing. So hopefully things will look alright for ourselves and Sill. But it is a long long way to go. At the Cape Verdes it will get more critical and hopefully we won’t all just be in a process by then."

See what Nick and Sam Davies are up to on board - on the Team Cowes webcam