Mad boy Munslow

TheDailySail catches up with Britain's frank speaking, epoxy welding belt and braces Mini sailor

In the UK singlehanded offshore racing has a long history of being contested by trained killers from Pete Goss to Chay Blyth.

Currently half way across the Atlantic on leg two of the Mini Transat, and doing remarkably well, is Britain's Ian Munslow. Munslow is no trained killer, but his belt and braces no frills approach is very much that of the services: grunt up, get the job done, it may not be pretty, but achieve your objective. The last couple of days have seen Munslow doing just this. He is not sailing the fastest boat, nor does it have that Gucci finish, but nonetheless he has been up to a commendable 12th overall in the charge for Brazil.

Ironically Munslow heralds from Derbyshire, like another well known singlehanded sailor, but unlike Ellen didn't save his lunch money to buy his first dinghy. A move to agricultural college in Telford close to the Welsh border, also didn't send him seaward until he happened to spy a poster advertising the Tall Ships Race on a noticeboard.

"The first time I sailed was the 1994 Tall Ships Race on a 43ft sail training boat, I went down to Portugal from Weymouth," says Munslow. "Then I didn’t sail again until the 1996 Tall Ships, when I went to Russia on a German ship. That was the first time I ever really enjoyed it. I didn’t know how to sail or anything. I just blagged my way on to it."

Following this he talked his way on to doing some delivery work in the summer holidays and eventually ended up working for the Challenge Business, crewing for corporate charters and on the safety boat for the Atlantic Rowing Race.

It was during his work for Challenge Business that Munslow encountered Bob Beggs. Beggs today runs a sailing school in Plymouth, but is a former Royal Artillery commando and has competed in a couple of OSTARs and like Goss and Blyth is as hard as nails.

"I always got on with him pretty well and he said to me if you are ever stuck for work, just give me a call because there’s always things going on in Plymouth," recalls Munslow. In 1998 he made that phone call to be told to hightail it to Plymouth where Beggs was just starting to build a Mini to a design by Merfyn Owen and Alan Clarke.

"I’d never done any boat building before then. Then the boat happened. And there was all this talk of Bob building one and me building one. I was really running on blind faith. Merfyn and Alan were really patient with me to let me do it. And it happened from there."

While some problems arose in Beggs' life that prevented him from continuing with his Mini project, it was he who cajoled Munslow into taking it on himself. "He fully talked me into it," says Munslow of the man who inspired him. "He is the best mentor in the world because he has done two OSTARs and done them both on a shoestring. He’s like ‘if that’s a challenge – come on…’ [he makes the noise of a dog growling] - that tough army attitude. He is my mentor completely, a fantastic bloke. And it happened - I started, so I finished."

The boat was originally conceived for the 1999 Mini Transat, but due to a shortage of funds and a lack of knowledge, Munslow ended up taking 18 months to complete the build. "I am just very lucky it passed the measurement straight away and it hasn’t broken up. It’s as strong as the helm of the boat is."

Financially Munslow was assisted by his grandfather, who subsequentally died before the boat was finished. When he eventually sailed in the 2001 Mini Transat Munslow took his granddad's ashes with him on board in an urn. "A bit of an emotional one that," he admits. "I scattered his ashes on the equator - he didn’t have much of a choice about it. But I had this bloody urn on the boat and I was imagining what it would be like if it burst - having to mop him out of the bilge..."

He inherited £10k from his grandfather, his parents helped him but essentially the entire project was put together on a shoestring. "Alex Bennett [who sailed the Mini in 1999] gave me some sails. I had a sponsor called Sonardyn [who make underwater electronics for the oil industry and military]. They were really good to me and gave me a workshop and a room to stay in and bought my mast and autopilot."

Through a contact of Munslow's cousin, another company from Manchester - Barrett Electrical - also gave him £3,000. "His angle was that his daughter is a rally driver - Natalie Barrett - she’s like the bottom of the pile but is out there giving it a go and he said 'I can see a like there'. And Merf [Owen] was cool - very helpful. He let me kip in his house for a couple of weeks."

Munslow competed in the 2001 Mini Transat finishing 22nd prototype, eighth last in class. But that was just the dry run.

Prior to the start of this year's Mini Transat Munslow had sailed an impressive 13,500 miles in his 21ft flyer, called Ishtar, named after the Babylonian goddess known as the 'Lightbringer'. He claims to have only not finished one race - the Mini Pavois in May, when he was rammed, dramatically, by a French fishing boat.

That incident brought on another crisis. Although Munslow had completed his qualification for the Mini in 2002, he was obliged to complete one race this year and that was supposed to have been the Mini Pavois. Fortunately the damage from the collision was repairable but it once again set Munslow into dire straights financially quite aside from the prospect of having to repair the boat and having just one race left to get to the start line of the Mini Transat.

Fortunately publicity from the collision caused some benefactors to come out of the woodwork. "After the crash with the fishing boat, it went out on the internet thanks to you and Leo [who runs the Dutch Mini site] and I got about £2000 out of it, more maybe. An International 14 sailor from your site gave me £500 and said come back to me if you need any more! So I sent him a really cheeky note saying I need £6,000 and he said 'no, but if you can find anyone to come up with some money I’ll match that'. I’d never met him before. So I got another guy to put in £1,600 and he said 'right, come to Bristol', which I did and he wrote me a cheque there and then. And he also said 'as a gentleman I’m not going to allow you to go to sea without insurance, so here you go, but you’re going to pay that back...' Anyway people’s generosity has been awesome. My whole project is kept going by favours."

The rush was on to get Ishtar ready for the Transgascoigne. "It ended up being the last race of the calendar just by the nature of the beast," he says. "So the Transgascoigne, I had to finish otherwise I wouldn’t be here. We certainly didn't push it. The mast had just been repaired and it had been welded up. So it was like ‘is it going to be okay?' And it was fine, it has done 1000 miles now."

In La Rochelle prior to the start of this year's Mini Munslow, 29, looked unflappable - the confidence of a second-time rounder. "I know where I went wrong in some places and a lot of it was due to preparation. But you don’t know how to prepare for this until you’ve done it. I haven’t been on my boat all week," he said.



Despite the criticism the race organisation received for not allowing Nick Bubb or Chris Sayer into the race, Munslow is highly supportive of them. "Nearly everyone in Classe Mini has done it or has got a sibling who has done it. The more time you spend around it, the more you realise it is right. It is a lifetime passion to be involved with it."

He also staunchly supports the class' Corinthian spirit. "Otherwise you’ll have Golding turning up with a truck with two Minis on it and a container…another league. Eskil [Degsell - the Swedish Mini sailor, who also didn't qualify in time] was the same. He had a million Euro budget and he’s done two races. I’ve had nothing. I got a free pilot off Raytheon and a free trip off Brittany Ferries."

Independent, outspoken, singleminded, occasionally abrasive, Munslow is the archetypal Mini sailor, or more specifically Proto sailor because there now appears to be a difference between those who sail in the Mini's two classes. "The guys who sail Protos are the boat builders, the boat niggers, the guys with no money who have a passion. The guys who sail the Series boats are the doctors and engineers. If Series guys have a problem it goes on insurance and the boat goes into the boatyard. If a proto has a problem out comes the diamond wheel and it's 'GRRRR - get on with it'. If you look at the winners of the last Minis, it’s always been the guys who built their own boat - Seb Magnen, Yannick Bestaven, this year you are looking at Sam Manuard – guys who have that intimate knowledge of their boat.

"For me, it has been good because it is my boat, I’ve got to prove that's it's not a dog, because I built it and it is the complete project. For some people like the guys on the Pogos it is just a sailing event. I can’t blame the boat builder because it’s me. I can’t blame the guys who prepared it, because it is me. So it is an all-round personal challenge. It is a bloody expensive personal challenge.

"The Mini is a cool event. It is just you and you’ve got to trust your own judgement. There is a really cool poster of a guy doing a base jump and he’s jumping off a building and he’s looking at the camera and it just says ‘trust your judgement’. That epitomises this event. It is up to you to get your shit together. Your life is on the line, it’s a little boat, get out there, don’t cry about it."

So where does he think he will come? "People in life who don’t learn from their experiences are stupid. So to the best of my efforts and with the money I’ve got, I have prepared myself as well as I can. If I hadn’t hit that boat I would be better off, because I would have done more miles this year. But in some ways me hitting that boat, gave me more time out of the water and I’ve gained new equipment and had my electrics overhauled, which I probably wouldn’t have done. I’ve got the same sails, bar a new jib which Sander [Bakker, a fellow Mini sailor from 2001] bought for me. I’ve borrowed a masthead kite off someone. Other than that it is the same sails as the last transat.

"With my boat sometimes it has fantastic boat speed. Other times I am struggling for speed, but that could be me. I’m good reaching in big wind. Generally the windier it is, the better I do." He adds that if he doesn't pull out a result this time round, he'll go back to driving tractors.

If he does go okay he would love to move into bigger boats. "I would love to do the Vendee. I’d do it tomorrow. For me it is not just the sailing because I am not a natural sailor. If it could go back to basics it would be better without all the media stuff and hype. But that is the way it has gone. Like the way Soldini did it with Kodak in the BOC Challenge. It was super stripped out, nice and simple.

"I would like to do the OSTAR but with them changing the fleet size, it makes it unrealistic. Going back to Around Alone, they were stupid to ban the 40s. They should ban the 60s and just have 40s doing it. Have you seen the Pogo 40? They've got one as a chase boat, with big beefy spreaders. Imagine those going one design around the world? That would be a perfect next step up from the Mini."

He says that as a result of doing the Mini he has a couple of possible sponsorship leads to move him on. What he lacks is someone to put the frills on it.

"I like to level with people. I don’t speak bullshit, which is probably why I won’t get anywhere. But I look someone in the eye and ask ‘you want to give me some money? This is it. There is a chance I could lose my mast, a chance I could die, and I can’t guarantee I can even get you a picture or a mention in anything."

He smirks at all the young guys who want to do the Mini he sees at boatshows wandering around with sponsorship proposals. He prefers to just go on and do it. "I’ve just adopted Bob’s attitude, because it’s got me this far. Some people think it is a bit agricultural but you end up doing it. You have to compromise but you do end up doing the job," he says of his philosophy.

He has huge respect, possibly even a bit of jealousy for Nick Bubb and his talent both on the water and his ability to get sponsorship and column inches on dry land. "Nick was incredible. He arrived last year going I’ve never sailed offshore before - RA RA. Now he’s already planning his team for the Vendee campaign. Haven’t you missed out a few steps there mate?"

So why didn't Munslow become a paratrooper? "I’m too chopsey. I answer back too much. I’ve got my own mind. That’s part of the problem."

Ian Munslow is very much the raw item and it is almost a relief to meet someone who isn't the manicured, highly polished sporting professional. If he is to be sponsored in the future it should be by Hummer rather than Mercedes Benz.