Two handed across the Atlantic

We look at the form for Saturday's Transat AG2R and talk to British competitor Sam Davies

The season in the Figaro class gets underway tomorrow with one of the most ambitious events in the calendar - across the Atlantic in the Transat AG2R, from Lorient to St Barts via a stopover in Madeira.

This will be the sixth time this biennial doublehanded event has been held. Past winners have included some of the great names in the class - Michel Desjoyeaux and Jacques Caraes in 1992, Jean le Cam and Roland Jourdain in 1994, Alain Gautier and Tour Voile champion Jimmy Pahun in 1996, etc. This year will be the first time the race will be sailed in the class' new one design Beneteau Figaro and 32 boats are entered.

Who will win is hard to judge. Last year's Solitaire du Figaro winner Armel le Cleac'h is racing with Nicolas Troussel. Unusually since winning the Solitaire du Figaro last year le Cleac'h has been having difficulty finding a sponsor. Perhaps the days are gone when a Solitaire du Figaro win was a surefire ticket into one of the bigger classes. In the last week the French newspaper, Le Telegramme, are believed to have stepped in to support him.

Others to watch are Eric Tabarly's nephew Erwan, who has been consistently highly placed in the class and on this occasion is racing Jean-Luc Nelias the former skipper of the trimaran Belgacom. Figaro veteran Gildas Morvan is sailing with another class veteran and former Open 60 skipper Dominique Vittet, while the equally consistent Jérémie Beyou has the 2002 Solitaire du Figaro winner Kito de Pavant on board.

Solitaire du Figaro leg winner Charles Caudrelier has with him the young talented Antoine Koch, who has recently been skippering Giovanni Soldini's former Fila Open 60. Marc Thiercelin a veteran of two Vendee Globes and an Around Alone, sailing with another former Solitaire winner, Eric Drouglazet will be shoehorning Transat AG2R in before rushing back to Europe to race in the Transat, prior to his third attempt on the Vendee Globe this autumn.

While these are all bright young 20 and 30 somethings, two legends are also racing together - Lionel Pean, winner of the 1985 Whitbread Round the World race and Florence Arthaud, winner of the 1990 Route du Rhum. On Wednesday these two showed real form nailing the rest of the fleet in the AG2R's prologue.

Another former Solitaire winner Pascal Bidegorry is competing with Sidney Gavignet, who has raced in most of the French classes and was part of Neal McDonald's Assa Abloy crew in the last Volvo Ocean Race. Former Vendee Globe skipper and veteran journalist Patrice Carpentier is racing with Philippe Massu. Rodolphe Jacq, who won the last Transat AG2R with Herve Laurent is back to defend his title, now sailing with former Vendee Globe competitor and the man who on one occasion had to sew up his tongue in the Southern Ocean, Bertrand de Broc. Also racing are former Mini Transat winners Yannick Bestaven and Armel Tripon.

British competitors in the Transat AG2R are former Mini sailor Ian Munslow, racing with charismatic Dutchman Sander Bakker and of course Sam Davies who has joined forces with French Figarette Jeanne Gregoire.

Davies is not taking part on her own boat, Skandia, on this occasion as AG2R is a direct competitor to Skandia in the French market. To resolve this race organiser Francois-Xavier Dehaye has provided the girls with a boat with the unwieldy name of 3ème Trophée BPE Saint-Nazaire-Cienfuego de Cuba. Surely they will need a longer boat to fit all this on? The name refers to the two other Figaro events Dehaye organises, the latter being what is believed to be the Figaro class' first ever singlehanded transatlantic race and finishing in Cuba!

In fact Gregoire campaigned this boat last year under the colours of AG2R, who for several seasons now have been backing new talent in the class.

Since delivering her boat across the Channel in a 60 knot howler in February, Davies has been based out of the famous Figaro training centre in Port la Foret (to read more about this click here). At the Pole France 'Finistiere Course au Large' shorthanded sailing school this season the skippers of 12 Figaros, among them both Davies and Gregoire, six 60ft trimarans and three Open 60s have been honing their skills. Although these days the school is part funded by the local government, those attending must pay a fee and the training is taken very seriously.

Training is not run to a curriculum. Usually it is tailored to the year's events - in the case of the Figaro sailors, the Transat AG2R and, as ever, the annual Solitaire du Figaro. Davies expands on this: "Every other week we're on the water and the weeks between it is things like Jean-Yves Bernot who came for two days to do weather for the Figaro and the Transat AG2R. Other people have come to show us polar generating software, another came to show us MaxSea. Someone from the Federation [the FFV] came to tell us about drug control in the sport...all that kind of class room stuff."

As the new Figaro one design was only launched at the beginning of last season, over the winter the skippers have been trying to find ways of improving their boat speed. Remarkably every two weeks they hold sail trials, in which different lofts descend upon the school, fit their latest masterpieces to the boats and then the skippers are allowed to try them all out.

"You are not allowed to race or take photographs but anyone can sail on any boat and there are Zodiacs there so you can chop and change and see the different sails and compare them upwind and downwind or however. Seven sail lofts came one day..." says Davies. "It is brilliant. Everyone is really open with their rig and rudder settings, so you know what people are on, whether people have really raked rigs or trying a really loose settings. So you know exactly what the rig set-ups are so when you looking at people’s sails, 'oh that one looks really full' and you look and you see he’s got his Ds really tight so his rig is really straight. So you learn loads about the set-up of the boat from looking at it every day."

Aside from this training has included the normal practising of manoeuvres round the cans. "On cold days we did a lot of short courses with lots of hoists and drops so that people could stay warm! And then on days when the wind was more stable we did longer legs." During sailing weeks at the briefing each morning the skipper/pupils decide the training they want to do that day. "We might say ‘we want to look at VMG downwind’ so can we can do a course that has a long square run. So you just ask."

Davies used to train when she was part of Shirley Robertson's crew on the Yngling, but reckons that the program at the centre is even more intense simply because that is all they do there. "Everyone has sponsors or are paying their own way to be available every day and it is kind of frowned upon if you don’t take part in everything. So there is an emphasis on everyone doing the training together and the more people the better the learning."

While focus at the centre is usually for singlehanding, with the AG2R coming up they have also be carrying out double handed training. The significant difference with this is that while singlehanded racing in the Figaro requires the autopilot to steer a lot of the time, doublehanded one or other of the crew will always be steering.

Davies says that she is aiming to win, like everyone else, but would be happy to be within the top 10. This is certainly more fighting talk than she would have given a year ago at the beginning of her first season in the class. She believes she and Jeanne are capable of winning in terms of their boat handling and manoeuvring. If there is a possible weakness it is with their weather routing.

In the Transat AG2R all the skippers are having one GRIB weather data file and fleet positions fired through to them by the race organisation. This they receive via an Iridium phone on board and it then can be pulled into the MaxSea software for analysis. Davies says they will also be carrying a traditional paper weatherfax. Weather routing or access to the internet is forbidden during the race, but part of the services offered by the school in Port la Foret is pre-race weather routing, which Davies and Gregoire have been using.

Both Davies and Gregoire have taken part in the Mini Transat before so the prospect of racing a boat 10ft longer across the Atlantic isn't much of an issue. "It doesn’t feel like a daunting prospect," says Davies. "The boats are really sturdy and quite fast so I think it will pass quite quickly. The boats are really nice, enjoyable to sail and steer and they are set-up so they are easy to trim and there is no real toil. You can just get on and enjoy your sailing. I can’t wait to go and do steering for a week without having to stop to do anything else."

One of the advantages to not racing the Transat AG2R in Skandia is once the race is over Davies can return directly to Brittany and continue training while everyone else's boat is on a cargo ship for two weeks. While she is on the race Skandia will remain in Brittany having work carried out on her. Bruno Dubois and his team at North Sails France are currently conjuring up a new suit of sails for the boat and their completion should coincide with Davies' return. It will then be a case of checking the sails for a couple of days before Skandia is trucked down to the South of France ready for the annual Generali Mediterranee race.

Transat AG2R competitor list:

1		Armel Lecleac'h	Nicolas Troussel
2	THALES	Erwan Tabarly	Jean-Luc Nelias
3	CERCLE VERT	Gildas Morvan	Dominique Vittet
4	DELTADORE	Jérémie Beyou	Christophe de Pavant
5	BOSTIK FINDLEY	Charles Caudrelier	Antoine Koch
6	PRO-FORM	Marc Thiercelin	Eric Drouglazet
9	PORT TREBEURDEN	Romain Attanasio	Nicolas Berenger
13	MARSEILLE ENTREPRISES	Jean-Paul Mouren	Alexandre Toulorge
14	RAYNAL ET ROQUELAURE	Christian Bos	Pierre-Yves Moreau
15	DEFI SANTE VOILE	Benoit Petit	Thierry Chabagny
16	GROUPE COUPECHOUX	Jean-Marc Sparfel	Benoit Lequin
17	SOR TMC	Christian Bouvet	Arnaud Guilhouet
23	EGERIA	Sander Bakker	Ian Munslow
26	L'ESPRIT D'EQUIPE	Lionel Pean	Florence Arthaud
28	BEZIER MEDITERRANEE	Yannick Cano	Arnaud Boissières
32	FTH-THIRARD / CAEN A LA MER	Jean-Baptiste Dejeanty	Barnabé Chivot
33	CONTIGO	Vincent Vachette	Agathe Baufume
36	PETITS PETONS	Christophe Artaud	Laurent Pellecuer
40	BANQUE POPULAIRE	Pascal Bidegorry	Sydney Gavignet
42	MONACO MARINE GROUPE	Alberto Spina	Olivier de Roffignac
43	D'AUCY	Bruno Jourdren	Jean-Christophe Mourniac
45	GUYADER - L'ESPRIT DE LA MER	Philippe Massu	Patrice Carpentier
47	LITTLE BLACK SHARK	Antonio Pedro da Cruz	Olivier de La Motte
57	GEDIMAT	Armel Tripon	Damien Grimont
58	SPACETIME	Jan Hamester	Sens Hulsebuch
66	SKIPPER AG2R	Rodolphe Jacq	Bertand de Broc
67	ENTREPRENDRE AU PAYS DE LORIENT	Yannig Livory	Tangi Caron
70	MAISONS PIERRE	Marc LEPESQUEUX	Bertrand Lecharpentier
93	3ème Trophée BPE	Jeanne Grégoire	Samantha Davies
	Saint-Nazaire-Cienfuego de Cuba
94	CHARENTES MARITIMES SCUTUM	Gérald Véniard	Yannick Bestaven
96	CONNIVENCE	Jacques Einhorn	Eric Perron
99	AURELIA	Hervé Favre	Guillaume Neu Pietri