Four and a half hour cushion

We speak to Mini Transat leg one leadaer Isabelle Joschke about her race so far

On Monday Isabelle Joschke entered the history books when she became the first woman to win a leg of the Mini Transat aboard her yacht Degremont-synergie.

That Joschke won the leg came as little surprise - the Franco-German skipper was one of the pre-race favourites following her incredible season so far where she has yet to finish off the podium. What did come as a surprise was the margin by which she won. After just five and a half days at sea with 88 boats chasing her, Joschke won by 4 hours 24 minutes. Deeper into the fleet for example between 10 boats arrived over this same period between the fifth to 15th placed finishers.

"Secretly I was hoping for something like this, but I wasn’t expecting it because my competitors are very experienced with very fast boats. I hoped it would happen and it was even better than I was hoping," Joschke told thedailysail having finally emerged from her bedroom in Funchal, after catching up up with her lack of sleep.

So what made the difference? "There are many many factors that made the difference. First of all I had a very good boat for the downwind conditions we had and my boat was well prepared and I was well prepared and I was really rested when I left and then there was a tactical thing going out of the Bay of Biscay - it was very important to deal with the high pressure coming. After that the route from the Cape Finistere was very important and I think I had good advice about that." To see our pre-start interview with Joschke and the video guided tour to her boat, click here.

While her track from the La Rochelle start to Cape Finisterre at the northwest corner of Spain appeared straight on the tracking (due to it only being updated twice a day), Joschke says that in fact this was not the case. "First we had to go south of the route and then there was this high. You had to go a little bit into the high but not too much so this was important, to choose the moment when you had to gybe. Personally I had to gybe a couple of times. So it was not a direct route," says Joschke of this early play.

Having set sail from La Rochelle on Tuesday afternoon, come the first position update on Wednesday, Joschke was already into the lead with Peter Laureyssen on Ecover, the sistership to her own boat and the accomplished sailor/designer Sam Manuard chasing in second and third places. On Thursday afternoon Joschke was the first to pass Cape Finisterre by which time she had extended her lead over Sam Manuard, now up to second, to 18 miles.

From Cape Finisterre Joschke sailed more south of rhumb line in order to stay in the best breeze further away from the high pressure system and by making this call when the others either chose to stay close to the rhumb line, or even in Peter Laureyssens' case to the west of it, she extended further still.

For the 24 hours after passing Cape Finisterre was when the leaders experienced the most breeze during leg one. "It was between 25 or 30 for a while, but it was downwind, no problem - the boat is great in that, it was very nice conditions to have fun and go fast. It is really really nice." While her average speed for the leg was 8.11 knots over this period she averaged more than 11 knots - pretty reasonable for a 21ft boat.

Arriving in Funchal in the early hours of Monday morning Joschke looked tired, but her boat was still immaculate. "The boat is okay. There were just little things I broke, like you always do, but no main problems," she said. However Joschke says that once again she will be going over her Finot-Conq designed Mini with a fine toothcomb (the budget doesn't extend to her preparateur coming out, however her parents arrived yesterday).

And how was life on board? "On the first days I didn’t sleep much, maybe two or three hours a day and on the fourth and fifth day it was better because I could have the autopilot steering and then I started to rest because I knew I would have a bad finish if I didn’t rest. I slept especially at night because it is when you feel tired, but only when I could. Sometime you just couldn’t, so you would wait until it was possible not to change the sails all the time and not to stay on the tiller all the time."

A new feature for this first leg of the Mini is that because the course has changed from previous years, when leg one has finished in Puerto Calero Lanzarote, the course was substantially shorter. At a little over five days long it was possible for example to get a reasonably accurate pre-start forecast for the whole leg.

"Yes, you could have a forecast that would be more or less reliable for the whole trip," agrees Joschke. "Actually for the last day it wasn’t reliable because the situation changed between the beginning and the last day, but it is important to have it for the first few days and especially with the Bay of Biscay and Cape Finisterre which was very tricky."

Joschke has been training out of the Pol Finistere Course Au Large, the famous Figaro training centre in Port la Foret. And there Joschke has been working with Figaro sailor and former ORMA 60 Jean-Luc Nelias on her routing.

But this is only the first part of the test. While leg one from La Rochelle to Funchal was a mere sprint at 1,100, the real test will comes on 6 October when the boats set sail once again from Madeira this time bound for the finish in Salvador de Bahia, Brazil, a more substantial journey of 3,100 miles taking the boats through the trade winds, across the Doldrums - without the benefit of forecasts or routing - into the south Atlantic trades and down to the finish. Over such a long leg a four hour lead seems slight, but it is better than a poke in the eye with a blunt stick, as they say.

Fingers crossed that Joschke keeps it together. There is no one in this year's Mini Transat and only few elsewhere in our sport - with her impressive singleminded drive and focus.