The TJV's dark horse

We speak to Sam Davies about racing the mighty Artemis

After her incredible performance in the Vendee Globe, coming fourth in an eight year old boat, Sam Davies is currently the hot property in British solo offshore racing.

While last month her contract came to an end with her Vendee sponsor Roxy - reluctantly on both sides – so in July, Sam was approached to race the Artemis Ocean Racing IMOCA 60 with French Volvo Ocean Race veteran Sidney Gavignet in the Transat Jacques Vabre, taking over from Jonny Malbon, who is now Figaro sailing.

“If they could sign me a cheque to buy me a new boat tomorrow they would, because they loved it and got so much out of it,” says Sam of her relationship with Roxy. “The CEO regretted not putting Quicksilver [Roxy’s sister brand] on the side of the boat too, because it was such a big success. It is not even credit crunch-related. They had a problem with another brand, Rossignol, which means they are in a bit of financial difficulty, which they are dealing with, but it means they have to tow the line.” Sam remains a Roxy ambassador and it is possible that when times are better, they will return.

In the meantime she has set up a company called MySamantha with team manager Xavier David, who is hunting for a new 2012-13 Vendee Globe sponsor for her with the aim of building a new boat, probably a Verdier design. Sam says any money she earns currently from presentations and other work is being ploughed back into MySamantha to keep what she calls “her Roxy boys” together.

“The Vendee was so successful most people think we are already building a new boat,” she says. “That is one of the hard things to get across. There may be people who would like to join our new adventure that just think that I am already going with someone and don’t need any help.”

So, to press home the point, the Artemis deal with Sam is a ‘one racer’, for the Transat Jacques Vabre only, as the Edinburgh and London-based investment company are soon to decide the future of their sailing sponsorships, which we understand could go either way. Meanwhile Sam is looking for a budget across four years of 9 million Euros. Sadly it is not a great time to be sponsor hunting with Dee Caffari’s contract with Aviva coming to an end after the TJV and Ecover now only sponsoring Mike Golding in the Extreme 40. Meanwhile in France, insurance company Generali have stopped as has Delta Dore and Gitana. Conversely Virbac and PRB both building new boats, while Arnaud Boissieres has bought the old PRB with his sponsor Akena Verandas.



In the meantime for Davies and Gavignet there has been the no small issue of getting to grips with an entirely new and extreme Open 60 in the Rogers-designed Artemis Ocean Racing. “It is a good opportunity to stay out on the water and for me to keep in the circuit and up to date with what’s going on with the boats,” says Sam. “And you can go training and play with a radical boat which is good.”

Since returning from down under after Artemis Ocean Racing retired from the Vendee Globe with a severely delaminated mainsail, the experienced team at Offshore Challenges has taken over management of the campaign, their first step to put the 60 through a major weigh loss regime. They have changed the steering system from the Henderson 30/ Kingfisher-style rudder in drum/cassette arrangement to conventional twin through-hull rudders, losing the twin wheels in favour of a tiller in the process. The previous set-up was not only heavy, but, vitally, the pilot had trouble steering the boat.

“It’s really light and simple,” says OC’s Charles Derbyshire about the new system. “We compared it to the work we did with BT - which has kick up rudders - and there were so many hours and such complexity and a very fine line between it being strong enough and too heavy and not strong enough. It is a very difficult thing to get right. With this we wanted something that we knew was proven to get them to the Jacques Vabre finish line.”

With a two handed transatlantic race, rather than solo round the world, ahead of them they have also de-Vendeeised the boat, removing unnecessary sails, multiple halyard set-ups, etc. Much of the metal work on her rotating wingmast has been parred down and weight in the boom has also been reduced.

As to Artemis’ original excess of go-faster widgets, the inceptor on her transom has been re-engineered. “We tested it with BT in Concarneau, and it seems to make a significant difference to the speed of the boat,” confirms Derbyshire. “I think the other boats that have had those have proved that too. Mike [Golding] has seen that. All that was needed there was to change the system that weighed 16-17kg and take 10-11kg out and optimising that as a system and making it lightweight.”

While the interceptor has the thumbs up – the ‘bubble maker’, a device producing bubbles of air that slip along the bottom of the hull reducing friction in the ‘boundary layer’ between water and hull, has been removed. At the end of the boat’s Vendee Globe it was hanging off anyway.

The upshot of Artemis Ocean Racing’s diet is that while the boat weighed 11 tonnes at the start of the Vendee, now it is approaching 10.

Depending on the future of the Artemis sponsorship, Derbyshire says they might change the rig to a standard wingmast, rather than one with a convex trailing edge, or even a fixed rig. Or as an intermediate step they might shorten the deck spreaders which are around 1.5m longer than any of the others in the IMOCA fleet. “They have proven a bit of a problem sheeting sails, but the way the rig is designed they need to be that long,” he says.

This work was already well progressed when Davies and Gavignet signed on at the end of July. After the Artemis Challenge during Cowes Week, they campaigned the boat in the Rolex Fastnet Race, despite Gavignet suffering a knee injury when a cockpit winch blew up, attacking him. In the Fastnet race they were leading up towards the Rock, but were overtaken by BT, reaching Plymouth in second place, ahead of more experienced teams such as Safran and Aviva.

Since then they completed their TJV qualifier and have moved the boat to Port la Foret. The Figaro school there laid on three training weeks for some of the TJV IMOCA 60s and Artemis took part in these, with dock-based weeks between allowing the shore team to continue the weight loss regime and sail development. They also did some offshore training. “We went out for 48 hours with BT and Safran,” recounts Sam. “We did a great spinnaker run in 30 knots with the three boats close together in the dark! And we did another overnight with Foncia and BritAir in much more clement conditions.”

In addition to their training at the Port la Foret school, they also got in uber-coach Tanguy Leglatin, who Sam had worked with prior to the Vendee.

Throughout this time, Sam says she and Sidney have been attempting to learn all they can about the boat and certainly they have improved. “The dock rumour is that we’re really fast, but I wouldn’t agree with that totally. We have good moments - upwind, in anything really. As soon as you are max keel on this boat upwind, it is loving it. Then other conditions – we have been struggling to learn how to sail her in terms of using ballast and daggerboards. We had one moment when Sydney and I were virtually crying because BT was sailing circles around us – they were so much faster on a breezy reaching leg, which you would thing shouldn’t be too much of a handicap for this boat. It was just that we didn’t have the right configurations. But if you compare all the other boats, they have sailed them around the world, the skippers know their boats inside out and how to sail them and we are two years and 25,000 miles behind them. But we are doing as much as we can and Sydney is the best person I could ever have to sail with because he is just the guru in terms of speed and performance and then working with Tanguy and Port la Foret - we couldn’t have done any more.”

While upwind is their strength – hence they could be doing well after the first 48 hours of this race, their weak point is downwind VMG, due to their still excess weight compared to the competition and in the TJV there could be a lot of this, particularly in the latter stages. To compensate they have fitted the boat with the largest possible spinnaker. “I’m not sure if that spinnaker is going to make it to the other side of the Atlantic or not,” states Sam. “But the boat is quite easy to handle, when you are sending it you never feel out of control and we’ve had some fruity training sessions with the big spinnaker and full main up in 30 knots of wind and managing to gybe it in up to 25 knots of wind. So it is reassuring. And we have managed to get spinnakers down quite serenely – Sydney’s powerful physique helps quite a lot!”

So while we have put Artemis Ocean Racing two thirds of the way down the league table in our form guide, simply because of the known quantity that is the boat and the newness of her crew, we genuinely think that provided not too many things go ‘ping’ during initially upwind hell of the first 2-3 days, this duo could be on the podium come Costa Rica.

More photos on the following pages...