Trial by water

We speak to a highly relieved Clemency Williams about completing her first solo Mini race

Over dinner in Pornichet last week French Mini sailor/designer David Raison was asked to recount his 'famous story' from the 1999 Mini Transat when the keel fell off off his yacht. Raison deliberately cut his rig causing his top mast to break off and under his drastically shorten sailplan he was able to successfully make port in northern Spain, despite being keel-less. Listening attentively to this piece of Mini folklore while growing paler and paler, was one Clemency Williams, who in less than 48 hour was to embark on her first Mini ever race singlehanded, the Pornichet Select 6.50.

To read more about Clemency Williams - click here.

"It was terrifying," Clem admitted. "I’ve been terrified for months about it. It’s all very well saying you are going to do it, but when you are actually doing it it is a different thing. There was always the big question ‘what if I absolutely hated it?’ It would be such a disaster having worked so hard to get here."

In the event while great things were expected of Nick Bubb and Alex Bennett, she was the only British competitor to make it around the course, aboard her clothing company-sponsored Mini Bergs, persevering despite having a broken pole and thus unable to fly her kites.

"It was hysterical, being so new to a boat again and you realise you have got so much to learn about how to get the boat going and all the drills and procedures. I’m so used to sailing boats I know well. Then suddenly there was a start and the windward mark and then we had to get kites up and my pole was a bit broken, so it took me ages to get the kite up and then the pole broke and it went on like that..."

The course for the Pornichet Select 6.50 was a convoluted affair up to Belle Ile, back down the coast to Ile de Yeu, back up past Belle Ile again to Ile de Groix and then south again down the coast to the finish at Pornichet.

Matters were made worse by the conditions being a little more brisk than the leisurely force 3-4 forecast. Having started on Friday afternoon she rounded Belle Ile late on Friday night and had reached Ile de Yeu by late Saturday morning. By this time the wind was blowing a steady 30 knots and a massive sea (for her 21ft long Mini) had developed.

"Around Ile de Yeu it was just hideous. There was a massive tide and every tack was about 120 degrees. You just weren’t going anywhere. I tried every tactic - go offshore and go round it or go inshore and go round it. There was a massive on shore breeze and a massive sea pushing you onto the rocks. So you’d fight yourself away from it and then tack back and go straight back into the same situation."

Her boat Bergs, is the Simon Rogers-designed sistership to the Mini Brian Thompson and Jonathan McKee have raced in the last Mini Transats and has a keel that not only cants, but slides fore and aft. But unlike her successful sistership, Bergs has never been raced before and has not benefitted from any refinement. This includes having to go below to cant or slide the keel fore and aft rather than having lines led on deck. It is the same story for the daggerboard, located forward of the keel. "That starts to get a bit hectic when it gets really rough. If I get those systems run up on deck then I’ll be able to tack much quicker."

Clambering back on deck having tacked the keel on one occasion rounding Ile de Yeu the boat tacked itself and laid over. "I found myself sitting in the water going 'I hope the rig doesn’t come down'. But the rig was rock solid - I didn’t even see it wobble."

Instead of being terrified and going into shock Clem says she just had to deal with it. "If I’d been on a fully crewed boat I would have been more worried about it than when I was by myself. Because it was ‘oh my God’ - what’s the first thing to do to get the boat back upright? Am I going to lose the rig? I’d better get a runner on. You just start prioritising and working through all the stuff you have to do to get back up again and to carry on."

Down below everything had been thrown everywhere and there was a mulch of charts, disintegrated muesli bars and freeze-dried food in the bilge. "The boat was just hideous. I think there was a leak in one of the gators somewhere, but I didn’t have a chance to go down and assess it, but I didn’t carry that much water around. It was a complete tip, complete carnage. The whole boat turns over and everything just falls out."

Eventually she got round Ile de Yeu and shot off up the coast. "Once I got round I did this massive surf. I was so exhausted I put just a reef in the main and it was still about 30 knots and I did 15.7 knots across the ground on the GPS which was awesome." That familiar word that we have heard so often from Mini sailors...

After a great run north to Ile de Groix Williams was expecting another nightmare having to beat back down to the coast to the finish. In the end, of course, the wind died completely. "It was a nightmare. It took me ages to get south down back past Belle Ile again. There was nothing. Just a drift downwind all the way to the finish and I didn't have a kite."

At this stage there were no other Minis around and the sense of doubt crept in. "It is difficult when there are no other boats around because you haven’t got anyone to race against. And then you get concerned that maybe you’ve gone in the wrong direction."

Eventually she arrived in Pornichet at 2200 on Sunday night, thinking she was outside the time limit. In the event she wasn't and docked amid applause from her fellow Mini-ists. "I was so chuffed. It just made the whole thing worthwhile. I’ve spent the entire winter working on this and you get so little back until you start sailing, in terms of enjoyment. You get so jaded. 'Why am I doing this?' And then to go out there and do the race and get round and it makes it all worth it."

She adds that it would have been a massive disappointment to have done that race and not to have qualified. The race forms part of the obligatory 1,000 miles of official Mini class racing she must do in order to qualify for the Mini Transat.

"It was the hardest thing that I have ever done. There was an enormous sense of achievement when I got back in, especially because Alex and Nick had both retired, when I battled through."

She was fortunate that the boat didn't experience breakage. This being the first race of the season the attrition rate in the race was high with 29 of the 54 competitors including hot prospects such as Bubb and Bennett, even Bruno Peyron, retiring with gear failure (see list below).

"I was very lucky. I already had a slightly dodgy pole that I’d broken on the way down," she says. "Otherwise tiny things like the cars on my main broke - but only three of them so the main still stayed on. And the autopilot pilot jumped off a few times which was quite scary. I didn’t notice what had happened and I’d put the boat on to pilot and it would just tack automatically. Fortunately that was easy to fix. So I escaped unscathed. And the rig was amazing. I think it I put it through every possible test."

Completing the race, even though she finished last, has been a great confidence booster. "It is so easy to talk about doing it and there has been quite a lot of build up and I’ve had to work so hard to get here. But then I hadn’t really thought about how I was going to do the sailing by myself. I’d put my mind into doing the whole campaign and getting the boat and then suddenly I’m in Pornichet and I’ve got to race it."

The opening stage had been nerve-racking. "I was so nervous before it that I couldn’t even think about enjoying it. And the first part there was so much going on. Everything which people said about Minis suddenly came true. But then it got more chilled out as I got used to it. And it was brilliant. There was a lot of swearing, ‘I hate this. This is horrible. What am I doing?’ but I enjoyed it a lot more than I thought I would.

"I had to get around and I had to finish. Because it was so tough, it was better. If had just been light airs I wouldn’t have been put through my paces. I’ve been so worried about ‘what if I don’t know what to do in a certain situation?’ But I don’t know why - when you are by yourself you’ve got no other choice. I thought that I would get terrified of a massive sea or a tricky situation with large rocks, I didn’t have a chance to get terrified because there was so much to do."

Stories such as David Raison's helped put her on her guard, but did little to alleviate her nerves. "I kept thinking about that story all the way round. There was so much going on with the rig. I find it so extraordinary that you are sailing a boat in these big conditions and you are thinking ‘I hope the keel stays on’. Normally when you sail it doesn’t even cross your mind that the keel would fall off. And I was thinking about this system in the bottom of the boat. Could I cut my rig down? But it was just so extraordinary thinking these things."

One of her concerns was how she would deal with her sleep. She is a big fan of sleeping she says, but in the event she slept for around six hours total between Friday and Sunday night. "I just didn’t get as tired as I thought I would. There were down times when I felt I was so tired. I slept upwind to Ile de Yeu a bit through the night. I wasn’t very relaxed about sleeping, because I wasn’t certain what the boat was going to do. Then I slept a bit downwind. But not as much as I thought I would. I though it would be a real issue, but by yourself there is no one else to rely on so I’d rather be awake. I’m quite good at catnapping.

"I spent a lot of time talking to myself. The tireder I got every bit of my boat had a personality. The jib, the main and the autopilot. They all became people. I hated my jib and I gave it this character of this annoying little boy as it was slapping around downwind. Eventually I took it down because I was so annoyed with it...the stupid autopilot that did really well but kept doing really stupid things. It must have be hysterical to watch, but I think everyone goes slightly insane when they haven’t had much sleep."

But she says that the main issue was finding time to eat. As a result when she finished back in Pornichet she was utterly exhausted.

Later this week she plans to set out with a number of other Minis to complete her qualification passage for the Mini and then we will be heading for Dieppe for the next event, the singlehanded Mini Cup. She knows that with every mile sailed she will gain more experience. "It will be fun to get more used to the boat and be able to do everything much quicker and spend more time on weather and tides. This was all too busy…" she says. "It is not about getting a major result at this stage. It is about getting it all together. It is a whole new thing for me. People go out and sail their Minis and they get put off. And I wasn’t enjoying having these buckets of cold water over me and it was horrible. But you get in and think it was amazing. It was just so good to get around. And now I am looking forward to the next race, because I will be more confident sailing the boat. Now I know that I can sail the boat even when it gets nasty."

Results from the Pornichet Select 6.50

1 Corentin DOUGUET – Amazigh - proto
2 Pascal SIMON – Houba Hop – Series
3 Charles LORIEUX – Karantez 6 – Series
4 Catherine Gwenc'hlan – Tchupa Popka – Series
5 Chris SAYER (NZL) – Nzl 403 – proto
6 Adrien HARDY – Karen Liquid – proto
7 Ronan TROLEZ- Jardiland Vannes – Series
8 Olivier AVRAM – Cap Monde – Series
9 Olivier RAIMBEAUX – quatre quarts –
10 Nicolas BUNOUST – Loire Atlantique – proto
11 Michel MIRABEL – Gwalarn IV – Series
12 Bruno CROISEL – Zebulon – Series
13 Eric VAUTRIN – Kermoust –Series
14 Dany BEAUDART – New dream – Series
15 Sébastien MESURE – Cultisol –Series
16 Jean-Claude GUILLONNEAU – Zerline – Series
17 Mathieu SANNIE – Sterne/LPO – Series
18 Eric BOURRIE – Taquet Max – Series
19 Patrice FISSEUX –Oceanes – proto
20 Eric BAUWENS – Tchao- Series
21 Brian CALDWELL (USA) – Net Carrier – proto
12 Tiphaine VRIGNAULT- Popeye – Series
23 Louis DUC - Positive Vibration – Series
24 Adam CURRIER (USA) – Sabita – proto
25 Clemency WILLIAMS – Burgs – proto

Abandoned (29)
Yann Chevalier – Imagine – Proto Pilot problems
Frédéric Roux – Pepito – Proto Pilot problems
Xavier Haize – Le tour du monde – Series - Collision with competitor
Aloys Claquin – Vecteur Plus – Proto - Collision with competitor
Cédric Malengreau – Yapluka – Series – torn mainsail
Yvan Noblet – Appart'city – Proto – lost rudder
Bruno Peyron – Mini explorer – Series Pilot problems
Emeric de Vigan – Manjula – Series – battery
François-Jacques Jauffrineau – Vendée Prisma – Proto - dismasted
Alex Bennet (GBR) – Fujifilm – Proto -
Pierre-Yves Guillevic – Indigo – Series
Loïc Le Doyen – Wake up – Series
Michel Goyat – Bleizig – Series -
Jérome Dixneuf – Barberet composites – Proto
Yaniv Souzin (ISR) – Minimat – Proto
Sébastien Bordiec – Garcimore – Proto
Jérome Viel – Masoco Bay - Series
Thomas Bonnier – Construire à l'Ouest – Series
Eric Schmitt – La Limule – Series
Hugues Chollet – Al Dente – Series
Jean-Georges Nguyen – Mallet Immobilier – Series
Gildas du Cleziou – Yellow submarine _ Series
Jon Garai (ESP) – Srada – proto
Tanguy de Lamotte – Set Environnement – Proto
Jean-Philippe Legrand – Billit 2 – Series
Marine Chombart de Lauwe – Mcom – Series – pilot problems
Nick Bubb – (GBR) – Kenmore – Proto
Jacques-Arnaud Seyrig – Faxy Red - Series