Challenging ride

British Mini sailor Andrew Wood describes his action-packed first leg of the Les Sables-Azores race

The first leg of the Les Sables-Azores race was everything it prommised to be - a really good mixed bag of weather, very tactical and a good deal of fast down wind reaching.

I had a good start putting me in the first ten or so boats as we rounded the first windward bouy of the coast of Les Sables, but slipped back a couple of places refused to take the risk of dammaging one of my kites in the 2 mile downwind leg they had so kindly set up for us. Lots of people did, and there was a fair amount of carnage which I was glad not to be a part of.

However, as I rounded the last bouy of the little starting course and cranked up the keel, a loud bang let me know that my canting keel shackle had blown just when I most needed it. I went below to make a pretty quick repair and got domosofa.com back on course and set up for the long beat ahead of us.

Not long after the start as predicted the front passed through leaving us all in light airs and all heading in a southerly direction. We knew another low would be sweeping through Biscay at some time in the next 24 hours and it was very important to get the tack out to the west timed right. I put my first tack in some time in the early hours of day 2 and got GBR 500 stacked up and going really well into the increasing head winds.
At the peak of the winds (around 30 knts) I had an accidental tack leaving me stacked completely on the wrong side with the keel fully canted and consiquently the mast head went in the water ripping off my wind intruments and damaging the VHF antenna. I managed to get her back on course and sorted out the carnage below, which by now was just a big swimming pool as earlier my canting daggerboard system had blown the pully ring bolt, leaving a nice 10 mm hole in the deck which let a surprising amount of water through.

Eventually the front passed and I put my tack in and went to sleep, well, I say sleep, I mean more of a shivery, wet rest for a few hours. Apparently a lot of the fleet were suffering from 'Mal de mer' which fortunately was one thing that didn't affect me, and I later found out that I was in 7th place, so all the suffering had been worth it.

The two tacks I had put in were really well timed and I made it passed Finisterre with no additional tacks and carried on a little further south to get my self into the stronger winds before setting course for the Azores. The next day I started to set the boat up for the days run and was brave enough to put up my fractional kite and second reef in the 25 knot winds and spent the next 8 hours glued to the helm as the boat just took off at speeds of around 16 knots and a peek speed of 21.6!!

The rest of the sail to the Azores was perfect, consistent 15 to 20 knot winds from the quarter, and the usual days run was consistantly around the 200 miles a day range. It was really great practice for the Transat and was very interesting to see how the autopilot and indeed the main one (myself) would cope with sleep etc in these demanding conditions. I chose to eat and sleep very well, and in fact this did not cost me all that much in places always remaing around the top 10 for the entire race.


Photo: Stéphanie Gaspari

I had a few problems along the way what with ripping my mainsail and loosening of the pintle blocks etc, but nothing prepared me for the event that would happen just 50 miles from the finish line. At around 0500 hrs, I had been up for a few hours with the kite up and going well as I started to overhall the 7th and 8th places at around 10 knots, when all of a sudden the boat just stopped dead with a loud bang, the bow dug into the water spinning the boat round head to wind. I looked around but could see nothing but assumed it was a whale of which there are many around these sea food rich islands.

Of course the first thing I checked was the keel, and my heart sank as I saw the canter leaver part of it pointing forwards at 30 or so degrees! I immediately checked to see what damage it had caused to the whole system and was amazed to find that the track and sliders all looked fine, but the keel had just sheered inside its metal cassette. I fixed the keel centrally and carried on towards the finish line under a small kite and main losing three places but at least crossing the line with no assistance.

Having now lifted the boat and dropped the keel it is amazing to see that there is actually very little damage to the fin. This was due mainly to the keel being a sliding one that was not all the way aft at the time, so the pully blocks exploded taking most of the shock out and one of the two 10 mm keel bolts sheerd completley into three peices. All in all, I was very lucky indeed, and as my Father said, this boat obviously looks after me!

I fnnished 7 hours behind first placed Brossard, so I still am in the running for the return leg and all is to play for. Now, we have six days to effect all the repairs and to prepare ourselves for the return leg.Inittial forecasts are predicting the same conditions that we had on the way down, so it looks like a long, long beat back home.

Cheers for now,
Woody