11th despite a detour

Andrew Woods recounts his part in the Pornichet Select Mini race

Sorry for the delay on this report, I’ve been having all sorts of logistical issues to sort out before I could get the boat down to France before my first race. Nevertheless, I managed to sail domosofa.com down to Pornichet in the excruciatingly light airs just in time for my stability test. She needed to be re-measured due to a slight increase in her keel canting angle. It’s hardly different to how she was originally and indeed she’s still well within the 10 degree maximum heel limit but it should help give her that tiny bit extra power.

Having got all the measuring out of the way, I spent the next day going through the safety checks in which she only failed in a couple of minor areas - missing torch, no recovery line, spare batteries etc. That left me a few hours to sort out some of the more important gremlins I had noticed on the delivery trip down.

A good night’s sleep at a hotel with a check of the weather and we were ready for the race in the morning.

The Pornichet Select 650 is an interesting course of around 300 miles singlehanded and takes you north of Belle Isle, down to Les Sables then winds back up North again to round Ile de Groix before the final approach home. We had a general mixed bag of weather starting with a gentle F3-4 from the northwest as we made our way around Belle Isle. This breeze almost dropped out completely as night fell leaving the whole fleet bunched up inside the pass between Belle Isle and Quiberon. Gradually we felt the breeze fill in a little from the NE and I rounded the first turning mark in about 14th.

Now we had the big kites up and with the light breeze the autopilots could easily cope, so I think most of the fleet snatched a few hours sleep. I woke up at one point with a bit of a kite wrap, but soon sorted Domosofa out and got her back on track as we cruised on down (albeit with around 120m2 of sail area up) towards Les Sables. A few gybes later, and domosofa.com rounded the southern mark in 13th place.

From now on, the breeze was due to fill in from the west and we had to claw a bit of westing back in order to get around of Ile de Groix. This all started off well for me - GBR 500 was pointing really nicely with her new Kemp mainsail and as far as I could see, I was outpointing everything around. The problem came as night drew in and my fatigue caught up with me, I stupidly misread the rules thinking that we could head either side of the Ile de Yeu. Unfortunately this was not the case as I worked out half way up the wrong side! Without hesitation I swung her around and scraped as close to the coast as I dared in order to take her back down and around the west side. I foolishly lost about an hour with this dumb error.

The morning came in and saw us in a fresh and very wet 25-30 knot reach for the final approach to Groix. I had spent the night gaining as much westing as comfortably possible, which seemed to be a good move as I rounded Groix in 11th before freeing of for the sleigh ride to the finish line. This was really good Mini sailing, unfortunately I was too knackered and beaten up to appreciate it fully. With the keel almost fully aft, I was hitting 15 knots with just the jib and second reefed mainsail, but as soon as we got into the lee of Belle Ile it was time to get the fractional kite up. Actually a pleasure, the Navman pilot coped beautifully whilst I navigated the reefs into Pornichet. We surfed our way over the narrow finish line at 13 knots!

I crossed in 11th position overall and 9th in the proto class out of 70 starters - not bad for such a rushed first race, but such a shame I messed up the night before. I believe there were around 15 withdrawals during the race with two boats on the rocks. It just goes to show how easy it is to mistype a waypoint, or for the alarm not to go off, or a dozen other things that could spell disaster on these tough races, I really feel for those guys who had problems.

Right this minute I’m in the UK waiting for a few essential parts to arrive before driving the van (my home!) down to Lorient. Here I shall be meeting up with Sue Pelling from Yachting World who has bravely agreed to join me on the Demi Cle race, a 200 mile dash from Lorient to Douarnenez.

Cheers for now, Andrew