Embarking on the Figaro

With the Solitaire du Figaro starting today, Sam Davies brings us up to speed with her progress in the singlehanded offshore class

Sam Davies embarked on her Figaro campaign this spring and aboard her 32ft Beneteau Skandia will today realise one of her first goals by competing in La Solitaire Afflelou Le Figaro (the Solitaire du Figaro) singlehanded offshore race, the only British skipper to do so.

"I've always wanted to do the Figaro ever since Mark [Turner] suggested it to me when I did the Fastnet Race on board Xantor, before I’d done Royal & SunAlliance or anything," Davies told The Daily Sail. "So I’ve always kept an eye on it. And I sailed over to the start when Marcus [Hutchinson] did the Figaro race, when it started in Cherbourg. So I had a quick look then.

"It is so well known in France for being where everyone starts, but it is also where the good guys go to sharpen up their skills. So you get a mixture of rock stars and people like me who are trying to improve. But the people who come into this class are people from good sailing backgrounds. You’re up against people who have been winning in the class they were in previously such as dinghy racers, Olympic sailors, guys from all over. So if you want to race against the best it is one of the places to come and do it.

"And the Figaro boat is quite basic - it is not so radical that you’d have to learn anything coming from a Mumm 30 or a 470. It is a basic boat, no asymmetrics, nothing flash, it’s got two rudders so it’s quite stable. It is not easy to handle, but it is easy to manage around a race course for anyone who’s sailed before. There are tricks but there are no tricks to stop you sailing it."

Davies' previous singlehanded experience has been in the Mini class in which she finished 11th out of 60 boats in the 2001 Mini Transat. So far her results in the Figaro class are ostensibly disappointing - she finished 18th of 26 in her first race, the two handed Tour de Bretagne and then 24th of 31 in the Generali Mediterranee, her first singlehanded race in the class. But Davies says this is what she expected.

"I watched some of my fellow class Mini-ists go into the Figaro last year and I saw where they were ending up in the results. And I knew that they were really good sailors and they came into the fleet and were struggling to get into the 20s in the results - and that shows how good the Figaro is. Those guys were in the top five or top ten in the Minis. So I expected to end up where I am."



The fundamental difference between the two disciplines is that the Figaro is a one design while the Mini is a development class. "In a Mini you can be clever and be smart and do things like working out a really good way of stacking inside your boat or a different spinnaker pole system. In the Figaro you are limited - the spinnaker pole can only be this long and it must come off this point of the mast. You can't be clever in that way, but you have to be clever where you’re allowed to be. So like, say a Mumm 30 - you can spend a lot of time working on rig tuning and sail design - that is the only place where you can make the difference until you go offshore and people start falling asleep..."

The standard Figaro 2 sail inventory comprises a main, genoa, Solent, big spi, small spi and a storm jib. Both kites are fractional. "It is quite good because if the wind is above 27-28 knots you actually go faster with the smaller spi," says Davies. "But I would have changed down to the small spinnaker in that much wind."

In the class, a majority of competitors use Star Voiles or X-Voiles, a hangover from the old Figaro boat, a couple use Incidences, while on Skandia sails are from North France with whom Offshore Challenges have a long association.

The class has a new one design this year in the Figaro Beneteau 2. Beneteau have already churned out 52 of them, 42 of which are heading off today in the Solitaire du Figaro and the boats have not been without their teething problems.

"It has had teething problems, but all boats have teething problems," says Davies. "These are more obvious because everyone got their boat at the same time and had only two weeks from launching to the first race. And normally teething problems go un-noticed because they come while you are in work-up time whereas in this the teething problems appeared in the first race."

The fundamental problem has been with the alignment of the twin rudders, while some boats have also experienced issues with the water ballast tanks coming unstuck from the inside of the hull. On Skandia, their tanks developed some cracks but Beneteau quickly resolved this.

"Beneteau have been really good," says Davies. "They sent a big team to every race and been at every race start not just to fix the warranty issues but also other things, like in the Generali there was someone whose lorry driver had gone a little too close to a narrow-arched bridge and had a massive crack down the side of the boat from a road accident!"

Although the new boat is quite fat in the stern and with twin rudders looks like a downwind/reaching orientated boat, Davies says that it is also quite good upwind and not even that uncomfortable. She goes upwind at around 6 knots while the top speed reaching she has seen has been 16 knots (she believes that she has done as much as 20 knots, but the boat's sonic log was underreading).

As present she hasn't wiped out with all the ballast to leeward. "I've done some wipe outs but always spinnaker ones when I haven’t had any ballast in, but I’m sure I will.
We’ve nearly got the mast in. We had the keel out in the Solent on our first ever sail on this boat when it was really breezy."

Of more concern is her lack of singlehanded race miles compared to the competition. To date her longest solo race in the Figaro 2 was a 200 mile leg of the Generali Mediterranean which took 33 hours, first in a Mistral and then in a dead calm. The Solitaire du Figaro will see her embark on four 500 mile legs with three days of recuperation time between legs.

Figaro legs are estimated to take around three days, so one of the main issues competitors will face is a lack of sleep.

"Some people say ‘I only got one hour in four days’ but I know I don't function properly without sleep," says Davies. "I think the first day of this first leg is upwind up the coast so I think you have to time your sleep properly. So I can get some small rests for the first day - I can rest quite well and empty my brain quite quickly. On the first day you’ve got so much adrenalin, it is important to try and turn everything off, put the tiller down and shut your eyes. I’ll try and get 15 minutes max at a time. When I did these races in the Mini, the minimum my sleeps were were seven minutes each. So if the conditions were right and it was okay with the pilot, it would be seven minutes sleep, wake up, check things are okay and go straight back to sleep after maybe 1.5 minutes of being awake."

The reason for this is that takes roughly 7-10 minutes for there being nothing apparently on the horizon to a ship potentially hitting the boat. There are obviously issues with the International Regulations for the Prevention of Collisions at sea which stipulate that a visual watch must be kept at all times which is beyond the scope of this article (and we will address some of the other gear Sam uses to protect herself from collision in tomorrow's article about the technical widgets Figaro sailors are using).

Although the boat has twin pipecots, Davies says she is more likely to sleep in the cockpit or, if the weather is bad, on the saloon floor.

Food also can involve taking the eye off the ball and she says that she is not taking any freeze-dried because her favourite manufacturer, Technalia in La Rochelle, have gone bust. "So - lots of Yop [a yogurt drink]. You need quick energy on this boat especially on the first day because you won’t be want to be down below. So I’ve got energy bars and Petit Navire salads such as tuna salad in a can that you can eat straight off. And I’m going to try and have one hot meal a day either a Pot Noodle-type thing or the Sill army food packet you heat up with hot water."

Thermos flasks come into their own on these boats either to keep water hot, but Davies expects to boil the kettle, make the food and then store the food prepared in the thermos flask.

Davies views this attempt on the Solitaire du Figaro as being the first of many. Her main task this time is to be first Bizuth, or Figaro first timer where she is likely to face stiff competition from principally Marc Emig, a Tour Voile veteran who has sailed extensively in the 60ft trimaran circuit and in the Corel 45s, and a former Mini competitor of hers - Yves le Blevec.

"I'm going to be in the Figaro class for a while - at least three years. I think I need that to get any good at it. But it is nice to be somewhere where you can look forward that far and almost make a plan. With the Mini, you do the Mini Transat and that is that. And all the other big races like Admirals' Cup, all that kind of races, you work towards it, you do it and then the crew splits so there is no continuity. It is the same even with the Volvo Ocean Race. So it is nice to be in a project where you can look indefinitely ahead. Every year you do it there is improvement and even if you miss a year you still have all the lessons and the numbers."

She says that she sees sailing in the Figaro less as being a career, more like being at school.

And the teaser - is this merely leading up to the Sam Davies Vendee Globe campaign? "NO! If I did the Vendee Globe, it is not something I would be leading up to. I want to keep sailing forever and keep getting better and if one day I suddenly become crazy and decide to do the Vendee Globe - which isn’t in my plan - then it would only be part of my sailing career rather than the ultimate goal.

"But no one believes that I’m not heading for it. At the moment I just want to do the Figaro - that’s why I’m here."

To read more about the Solitaire du Figaro - see our special section on it here