Final leg showdown

Nigel King updates us on his progress in the Solitaire du Figaro

Nigel King is currently 37th overall in the Solitaire du Figaro, in a field of 52 and while this might not sound like he is setting the world alight, his deficit on race leader Nicolas Lunven is just three hours while gaining just an hour on the competition will pull him up to 25th and two hours would launch him into 16th.

If nothing else this indicates to the average Joe that the Figaro class may be weird and French and singlehanded, but it has probably the most competitive racing in the offshore calendar. Michel Desjoyeaux, who has won the event three times is on this occasion lying eighth overall, while just ahead of King in 34th is the extremely talented Franco-German Mini sailor, Isabelle Joschke, while King is one place ahead of Christophe Espagnon, who represented France in Beijing last year aboard a Tornado.

“It has been a tough old race,” commented King before leaving Dingle at the weekend. “The standard this year is phenomenal. There are 20 guys who are up there and 10-15 who could win the event. So it has been probably as tough as expected as sure.”



Over the weekend the Figaro dock in Dingle, southwest Ireland, was surprisingly busy with members of the public coming down to see the boats, no doubt partly spurred on by the upsurge in sailing interest there following the recent Volvo Ocean Race stopover in Galway and the part their own sailing royalty, Damian Foxall, played in the class when he competed in ita decade ago. The complaint in the class is that the stopover was a day too short.

Between the Figarists the talk in Dingle was of the extraordinary finish to leg three up from St Gilles, when coming into the Bay of Dingle, 15 miles from the finish, the race effectively restarted, with IMOCA Open 60 skipper Jeremie Beyou collecting his second leg win by just 19 seconds.

“There were loads of winners and losers,” recounts King of this gripping finish, which saw the top 47 boats arrive within just 40 minutes of each other, after 3 days and 11 hours of racing (probably the closest ever Figaro leg finish). “Jeremie Beyou was the biggest winner - he was around 25th coming into the bay - while Antoine Koch who had led for most of the leg was the biggest loser. But that is the good and the bad of offshore one design racing.” Because the race is on accumulated elapsed time rather than points per leg King himself was one of the winners, finishing 22nd, just 9 minutes and 8 seconds behind Beyou.

“The biggest thing is that I am close, I am in there, although I am a little bit frustrated with my position,” continues King. He realises that there is still much for him to learn in the class and unlike the majority of his competitors, he hasn’t sailed countless Solitaire du Figaros (this is his second), nor has he had the opportunity to train full time this year out of a specialist singlehanded training centre, as his rivals have been doing. He kicks himself, for example for being too extreme with his westerly route down to La Coruna on the first leg. Other than that it has been a case of falling behind through accumulated small mistakes, all a product of lack of time in the boat.

The fourth and final leg of this year’s Solitaire du Figaro takes the boats to Land’s End and then up the south coast of the UK to a turning mark at Needles Fairway Buoy before crossing the Channel and the shipping lanes, to Dieppe. So will sailing in homewaters for the most tactical part of this leg benefit him? “I hope so. Jonny [Malbon] and I know the coastline better than most of the guys, but they have all done their home work. I’ve still got to get it right, because it is so easy to get it wrong. I am going to have to sail out of my skin. I set myself up with some objectives for this race and I am not there yet.” His objective is to finish in the top half of the fleet.

To give some idea of the competition he is up against, Nicolas Lunven the present overall race leader maybe a relative unknown outside of France, but he, like Yann Elies, is a second generation Figaro sailor, both his father and uncle having raced in the class in the 1970s. Just 26 years old, he has a solid background in keelboat racing including a Mumm 30 Europeans win in 2006 and has posted mostly top 10 results in his subsequent Figaro class racing. He is also a member of the Foncia team, sailing for example the team’s D35 on Lake Geneva with Alain Gautier.

While Lunven hasn’t won a leg (Elies won leg 1 and Beyou legs two and three), he was second on leg one and third on leg two and due to the tightness of the finish into Dingle, his disaster of a 33rd place has made little impression on his position. Interestingly if the Solitaire was being scored on points per leg rather than accumulated elapsed time, then after three legs, this Solitaire would be a three horse race, the leader Beyou, just one point ahead of Thierry Chabagny and Armel le Cleac’h. Lunven would lie 10th.

“There are times when it can be over after the first leg, it is the old way and I quite like it – the fastest person around the course wins the race,” says King of the scoring system. “If it was points, it would be all over for me.” In fact he would be 37th, in his exact same position on elapsed time.

As to his own game, King says he is still on a steep learning curve, but having competed in the Solitaire before he is more confident of his ability and understands more about what is required, even if he has trained less for this event than he did in 2007.

“I think the guys in the fleet, they recognise where I am at and I can put myself in there at times. I am one of the group fo 30 or so boats that could spring up there. I spent some time yesterday talking to Isabelle Joschke and she said compared to the Mini it is a different world. It is much harder to get into. The biggest thing is that having so many boat around you are always driving yourself, always worried, and that drives you to push yourself beyond your limits. It is managing that that seems to be the hard thing. It is a challenge.”

We shall see over the next 2-3 days if his local knowledge will pay.