Amazing sail

Mini sailor Nick Bubb recounts his experience in the second leg of the two handed Odyssey of Ulysses

Nick Bubb was still buzzing after a 300 mile blast reach across the Mediterranean to Antibes aboard his Mini Northern Exposure when The Daily Sail caught up with him earlier.

The start of the second leg of the Mini class' two handed Odyssey of Ulysses race from Hammamet in Tunisia and back to Antibes was delayed for two days because the swell from the easterly wind prevented the boats from leaving through the 10m wide mouth of the marina. "Then the wind went round to the north but it was still pretty hairy and everyone was a bit tense beforehand. But they got out alright," commented Bubb.

With the wind dying in the last days of the first leg several boats didn't make it into port until two days prior to the restart.

With a start in 25 knots upwind combined with the Tunisia experience, everyone sailed cautiously at the start. "They were really conscious that you couldn’t get any new kit in Tunisia. There were people who travelled 60 km to find a decent chandlers. For instance I broke a jib halyard on the first leg and I couldn’t find any Spectra in the whole of Tunisia so I had to have a polyester halyard."

Going into the first night, Bubb says they were up to third with Armel Tripon and Erwan LeRoux on the Finot design Moulin Roty in the lead and leg one winners Sam Manuard and Mickael Mergui on Tip Top II lying second with Pia d'Obry and 2001 Mini Transat winner Yannick Bestaven on board Seafari in fourth. But this was not to last for long.

"I spent the whole of the stopover chatting to Yannick because he also built a Magnen boat and won both legs of the Mini Transat in it. He told me about the set-ups and sails for different conditions. And then we spent the first 12 hours locked together side by side. He was sailing slightly higher than me so I kept winding on my jib halyard tension and winding on the runner and I snapped my polyester halyard which was really stupid. I just wasn’t thinking. I’d had a 6mm Spectra halyard so I went for a 6mm polyester one. I couldn’t use an 8mm because of the size of the jib blocks. So then I had to fly the jib off my fractional kite halyard, and this was 30 miles from the start line on a 500 mile leg..."

Every time they tacked they had to drop the jib and rehoist it on the new tack to prevent the halyard chaffing on the forestay.

A high pressure system was expected and at this point the leaders divided. Prior to the start Bubb had been advised that the wind would go northeast by his met man GBR Challenge's Jules Salter. Bubb went to the east and got caught in the high the wind dying away to nothing.

"I don’t know enough about meteo and I’ve got to work on it. Talking to the guys who won they all saw on their fancy barometers that the high had come over earlier than expected so they headed off to the west. So you live and learn. Then the next morning on the VHF, when we all met up again that off the southwest corner of Sardinia, the lead pack were about 20 miles ahead of me."

From Sardinia on the conditions proved spectacular. "The wind filled in from the south west and we had 25 knots, so it was manic broad reaching although there were a few gybes around islands. It was pretty full on. We were under masthead kite, full main all afternoon averaging 12, 13 ,14 knots. It was fantastic having sailed 700 miles upwind to get the spinnaker up properly and have a blast. The boat is so well balanced - that’s the amazing thing - it was almost worrying because I could doze off at 15 knots on the helm which is a pretty novel concept."

That night Bubb said he made another error. "I was trying to push too hard. The guys were just ahead of me and we passed a few boats in the evening but I knew that Sam and those guys would be pushing just as hard. The two previous nights there’d been a lot of light, the moon had been out and you could see everything. So we left kite up. Then a front came over with a little bit of rain which should have made me realise and five minutes later it was blowing 30 knots, pitch black and I couldn’t see anything.

"The boat was off, manically surfing at 15-16 knots and it was all I could do to hold on to it because I couldn’t see any of the waves. I couldn’t get the kite down because I couldn’t see anything - we’d got the 84sqm kite up which is a monster - and then eventually we tripped over a wave, the bow went right under and then the boat just flopped on her side and we spent the next 10 minutes trying to sort everything out."

Miraculously in the wipe out they didn't break anything. They spent two hours without a kite up as they checked over the boat and then hoisted the fractional. The next morning when they rehoisted the big kite, there was not a single rip in it, although they had managed to bend the Windex...

"After that it was fractional kite all the way but we couldn’t pull back the 20 miles the guys ahead of us had," continued Bubb. "The first boat finished at 4am and then four boats all finished within 3 minutes of each other at around 8am. Then we came in at 12.30 when the wind had died off. The guy who finished one place after us in eighth, we beat by 30 minutes, but he beat us by two hours on the first leg so he got fifth overall by an hour and a half and we got sixth overall."

Bubb and Northern Exposure (to be renamed Northern Computers) is now heading to Port Camargue in the south of France for the 500 mile non-stop Course de Lions. Again this is a two handed race and Bubb will be sailing with leading east coast sailmaker John Parker of Quantum Sails. Parker will also be sailing with Bubb on the class' Mini Fastnet race in mid-June.

"The Course de Lions is going to be good because all the guys are going and Brian Thompson is doing it in his old boat with Jonathan McKee. There is quite a bit of hype about that - double Olympic medallist. There should be 40 boats for that one, so it should be pretty full on."

After he completes the Course de Lions, Bubb will have completed the necessary qualifications to gain a spot in the Mini Transat. However his getting into the race is still not assured and there is the normal crisis going on in the class at the moment over who will get into the Mini Transat and who won't. Bubb believes that after the Course de Lions there will be around 10 boats that will have qualified and they will all be fighting for the three remaining places available.

Check back later in the week for our overview of what is happening in the Mini class