Stamm's secrets

James Boyd spoke to Around Alone's winner to find out what made the difference

If his performance in Around Alone is anything to go by, Bernard Stamm and his Pierre Rolland-designed Open 60 Bobst Group-Armor Lux is likely to be a major contender to watch out for when the Vendee Globe singlehanded non-stop round the world race sets off in November 2004.

When we sit down to chew the cud, while the 39 year old Swiss skipper is digesting his first steak et frites and red wine since arriving, he is on his post-race high - completely exhausted but buzzing. He says it normally takes about 8-10 days before his sleep cycle reverts to its land rhythm. "But after that I sleep very much..."

During the race Stamm says his sleep pattern varied according to how much he was required on deck. He got little as he struggled through the Doldrums on leg two and almost none at all whenever he closed on port, particularly in the terrible conditions as he sailed down the northeast coast of New Zealand at the end of the third leg. Under 'normal' circumstances he says he would sleep for a maximum of perhaps six hours a day in 20-30 minute bursts, but would make sure he slept as much as possible.

He believes that sleep deprivation is worse in events such as the Figaro when you go from the land straight into not sleeping at all for two to three days although he admits that during Around Alone he did find himself talking to people he thought were on board. "One time I told someone they have to wait for the toilet, which is strange because there is no toilet on board!"

He adds that the relief of reaching on terra firma is being able to get back onto an even keel emotionally. "During the race you are never on a plateau. You are either on a high or low and when you finish that stops"

Stamm won all but one of Around Alone's five legs and on that he was first to cross line but was penalised 48 hours for stopping in the Falklands to effect repairs. "Bernard is very hungry," comments on Benoit Lequin one of his shore crew. "All the time he works on the performance and he knows the subject, the information, the electrics and he knows the boat very well because he built it. If he needs to repair the computer, he can repair it. It's the same with the boat."

Stamm doesn't believe that his is the fastest boat in the fleet. "I think all the boats are close. The best for pure speed is Tiscali or Hexagon. They are very competitive boats, but I think Graham [Dalton] had a big problem when he lost his mast before the qualification and he lost a lot of time in his preparation and it was hard to find this time again. Tiscali was the same. I think the advantage was that Thierry [Dubois] and I had was that we know very well our ships."

In comparision to the more powerful hulls of some of his competitors, Bobst Group-Armor Lux was more of an all-round performer and Stamm says he had trouble keeping up reaching. "There is more volume in the front and I have to push more water, so I have to charge the ship to have the same speed as the rest, so it is more risk to the ship."

To be effective as a solo ocean racer Stamm says there are a number of vital ingredients to a campaign - be it the boat or the individual - of which familiarity with one's vessel is one. "For me it is a big advantage. I don’t think about how to sail the boat. I just look at the weather and choose the way. After that I use the ship to go where I want to go. I don’t have to learn about the ship. It is like you turn the key in the car and you go where you want to go. I use my ship like a tool."

"You have to spend a long time with your ship to get to there," Stamm continues. "But we started this as soon as we put the ship in the water. The first experience was the Vendee Globe. It was sad but it was a big experience. Then in the Atlantic record [when they set the New York to Lizard monohull record] we had very bad weather and high speeds. Then we did close races like the Regate de Rubicon, so we got a lot of experience and sailing with people on crewed races like Christophe LeBras, and I sailed a lot with Bruno Jourdren [one of the top Figaro sailors] - I learned a lot of from those guys."

Part of this familiarity came from building the boat. "I think it would be very different if the ship came out of a boatyard. I would have to learn everything about it, its structure and it would be very different," he says.

Extensive understanding of the weather is also vital. Prior to the start of the race and during the stopovers Stamm worked closely with French meteorologist Pierre Lasnier.

"I know Pierre well and I can see the weather a little like he sees it. It is not only local, it is globally - he looks at the big picture. He didn’t teach me the weather - he just tried to make it so that I am able to use what I know about weather in the race."

Stamm says he would spend a long time working on a long term strategy for a period of for example one week. Once he'd chosen this route it would then be case of fine tuning it as he went along. The fine tuning would take considerably less time.

He says this is last leg sailing north up the Atlantic from Brazil to Newport on the east coast of the States was slightly different because there were not too many options aside from how to round the bulge in Brazil, crossing the Doldrums (which he says he didn't come across sailing north) and whether to forge west to get the beneficial effects of the Gulf Stream.

One of his most unusual strategic triumphs in the race came at the start of leg two when a huge depression was forecast. It was this depression that caused all the class 2 boats to run for shelter in Spain. Meanwhile Stamm unconventionally headed for the centre of the depression.

He experienced severe conditions going into the centre of the depression, which he admits was risky, but in the middle of the depression the seas were flatter and he says he was able to exit the depression sailing 3-4 knots faster than those who were struggling through hideous conditions to get round it to the east. It was this that gave him the jump in leg two.

He adds that it was necessary at some stage in the north Atlantic part of this leg to get westing in and he was able to achieve this faster earlier on in the leg than later.

Another point he stresses about weather forecasting on board is the important of using the real conditions on board. Aside from this on the round the world race course there are many ways of finding 'real' data about what is going on from off the boat using measurements taken foir example on weather buoys. "It is like in the first leg, from New York to south of Iceland there are 180 buoys showing the wind, current and everything. If you can take this information it is very good because it is not the forecast, it is reality."

This information can be used to find out how inaccurate the weather chart is, whether a system or a front is arriving late or whether it is not in the location forecast. Basing routing on an inaccurate forecast is next to pointless he maintains.

A mistake he made in retrospect was on the final run into Tauranga. "There was 45 knots of wind but a crazy sea, like you find in the Gulf de Lyons with the same high, short waves. There was a low pressure going from east to west."

He tried all manner of sail combinations to see if he could make progress but couldn't and the boat received a battering. During this time he hit a sharp submerged object that set off major delamination in the hull of his boat, later requiring 8m of uni-directional carbon to be replaced under the hull. His boat when it reached Tauranga looked like it had been through the wars. After he finished the leg Pierre Lasnier had asked him why he hadn't considered weathering the storm in the shelter of the Hauraki Gulf as second placed Thierry Dubois had been roughly 200 miles astern.

The story was similar on finishing the penultimate leg. Shortly after rounding Cape Horn, again in severe conditions, the boat surfed down two waves, accelerated to 32 knots and after launching finally crashed down with such impact that it cracked the boat's canting keel inside the boat between the pivot point and the top of the foil where the block and tackle canting mechanism attaches.

Genuinely worried that the keel would break Stamm said he had set up so that he could hurried cut away the rig should the keel fall off. Luckily it held long enough for him to put into the Falklands where the keel was reinforced with two large plates that were bolted through the top of the foil. This temporary repair got him to Salvador where his shore team worked round the clock attempting to effect a more permanent fix, installing a steel box around the top of the foil.

Another key component of any singlehanded campaign is the shore crew. There were two working full time with Stamm on Around Alone - Jean-Christophe Caso and Benoit Lequin, both sailors in their own right. Caso was shorecrew for Marc Thiercelin in Around Alone four years ago. "I am learning very fast," Stamm admits. "On the last leg I didn't break anything. They did good pitwork in Salvador and Tauranga. Thanks to them it was possible for me to start every leg in good shape. They are as good at preparations as they are in the bar."

In addition the highly experienced Christophe Lebas helped prepare the boat before the start while Stamm's partner Catherine Rouge worked on the logistics and on the food.

It was this team who had the job of fixing the boat particularly after the beatings it received in legs three and four. Here having arrived in Newport, Stamm says there is little that needs repairing, although this may have been the result of a paranoia he may have had to breaking the boat on the last leg.

A new keel will be needed - or at least the top of the keel. Stamm also says that he is long overdue a pair of new rudders. The ones he is using originally came from Alain Gautier's 1992 Vendee Globe winner Bagages Superior, although they are much modified.

He says he wouldn't risk changing to a wingmast, not because it might be faster or slower but because it would take too long to learn how to use it. Unusually an area which he says he must change is the electronics panel.

"I made a big mistake in the construction," he admits. "All the ship was in carbon and if I had to make something in fibreglass, I had to buy the fibreglass. So we did this panel in carbon fibre. For electricity it is very bad. It is a conductor - so there is a lot of current in the hull. It is only 12v but it is enough to discharge the batteries. Even if you have an antenna, if it is not isolated current can go into the hull when you transmit..."

As mentioned in the last report Stamm sailed Around Alone at a considerably speedier rate than Giovanni Soldini, winner of the previous race. He doesn't think it is likely that he will sail the next Vendee Globe at a pace any slower. "The pace was similar to the beginning of the [last] Vendee. The last time in the Vendee we left very fast until Parlier broke his mast and after that they slowed down." Strangely this was also the case in the 1996/7 race until Parlier broke leaving Christophe Auguin to cruise home in first place. He wonders that with such a competitive fleet lining up for the next Vendee Globe if the competition won't continue all the way to the finish.

In bygone years singlehanded sailor haven't steered much instead relying on their autopilots. However Stamm said that he steered often particularly on occasions it was necessary to get the best from the waves or a shifting wind. "I think to make the pilots work well, you have to steer first to feel how the ship goes and if there is something wrong, the pilot will work, because it doesn’t feel anything but it will use more and more power and it will not steer in a direct way."

Clearly Stamm is one of the foremost talents at present in singlehanded ocean racing and it will be interesting to see now that he has an addition 28,000 miles or so on the clock how Bobst Group-Armor Lux performs when she lines up against other top non-Around Alone 60s like Sill and Kingfisher.

Stamm intends to take part in the full IMOCA circuit this season starting with the fully crewed round Britain and Ireland Race that starts on 26 July.

To read more about Stamm's boat Bobst Group-Armor Lux - click here