To Madeira without kites

Andrew Wood reports on his first leg of the Mini Transat

The start of the 2009 Transat 650 was relaxed and totally under control for me. I was happy with the boat, I had got myself into a good pre-start position and the countdown was perfectly in sync on my bulkhead instruments. In the final two minutes, my jib went up and I started to bring the power on for the line right at the committee end. On starboard, I crossed the line under full power without issue leaving the boat pointing beautifully toward the first tack. The first one onto port went really cleanly and brought me up to the windward buoy lay line, I swung her through again and rounded the triangular buoy in the top ten out of the 85 strong Mini fleet.

I could have jumped for joy as the helicopters buzzed overhead taking photos and the kite popped open crisply taking the boat up to full speed in the 20 knot breeze, she was already stacked aft and as I pulled the keel back, 500 just took off. I was allowing myself to revel in my near-perfectly executed start as the first of the VHF commotion started, then a few boats started dropping kites and peeling off to the north.

After about four calls in French and twice in English to no avail, some kind soul finally explained to the fleet in English that over half the boats had rounded a bogus mark and had to return. So, finally as the large and rather heavy penny dropped, so did my kite along with my heart and I came about for the long tack back to the genuine turning buoy.

My good start combined with being one of the last to understand the problem made properly sure that I was the last to re-round the correct buoy. The whole mess up which was caused due to the start committee placing an orange triangular buoy in line with and before the similarly shaped and coloured starting buoy, cost me over an hour and way more than that in energy and spirit.

So, resigned to the fact that I was now right at the back of the fleet by at least an hour, I re-hoisted my kite and pushed hard into the night. I overtook a good few minis during the day and was just thinking it was time to take down the large spi when I had a spectacular broach, ordinarily not such a huge problem, but when I went to drop the kite, it wouldn’t!

The halyard cover had chaffed loose inside the masthead sheave. I tried for quite some time to get it passed the bunched up cover, but it really wasn’t having it and so I reluctantly dropped the mainsail and prepared to climb the mast. The wind was now blowing 20+ knots, the seas large and it was dark. There was an 85sqm kite flogging from the masthead and the boat was rolling horrifically... a climb I was really not looking forward to.

The first thing I had to try and work out was what would happen when I cut the rope, I would be up the mast and the sail would then be under the boat, the rudders wouldn’t work and the boat would broach. So I figured I’d have to ease the fractional kite halyard enough so that I could attach that to the spi head before cutting it loose, which in the end worked just fine.

So after about an hour of prep and climbing, I finally returned to the deck battered, shattered and bruised in order to drop the now ripped spi using the fractional halyard. This went ok and I wasted no time in putting my fractional kite up in order to try and catch up again. The loss of my mast head halyard left me with only the small kite now, but I pushed as hard as I could through the night nonetheless. As it turned out I desperately needed my medium several times over the next few days, but there was nothing I could do.

Eventually after some three reef sailing in the gale force winds off Finistere, I once again started pushing hard with the fractional kite, then, after about six hours of this ‘on the edge’ sailing ... BANG! I chuckled to myself in a self pitying kind of way as I watched my only kite fly off ahead of the boat then down and under the keel. My fractional halyard having parted, I was now left with no downwind sails at all.

With nothing more to do, I set my jib goosewinged , sailed really deep for 24 hours and slept until the seas died down enough to make another climb. The next day, the wind had eased to about 20 knots and the seas were down to around three metres, so I had to go up and get at least one halyard working.

This time, I was determined not to lose speed so I left the main up on 2nd reef and climbed on the backstay. It’s never nice at the top of a mast at sea, but with the large swell, it’s even more terrifying, especially when the boat broaches and you start hurtling toward the sea. Your mind very quickly starts calculating righting moments and stability tests, and at that particular moment, I felt very, very large and very heavy, an awfully long way up a very long and spindly pole.

Eventually I managed to get the mousing line attached and descended. I have never been so happy to get back down on a deck, even having seen that I had very stupidly brought the mousing line tail inside the top spreader and shrouds meaning I’d have to climb once again to re route it didn’t make me too upset!

Now, I had just one spi, the medium for the rest of the race, no code 5, no gennakar and no big runner. So, I worked that kite better than I’ve ever worked any sail, and it performed like a dream. It saw me through the rest of the stronger winds and then through the two days of light airs where I jostled with the other Rogers #247, he switched through his entire sail wardrobe during those two days, and he never got the better of me. By the finish I had gained about 15 miles on him.

In the end, I finished 18th some six hours behind my target of 10th place, so I have a fair amount of catching up to do in leg two. But all things considered, in between times when I wasn’t up the rig and when I actually had the use of the right sail for the job, the boat was going like a dream. My new third evolution Kemp sails were bang on target and I’m really fired up for the second leg.

Big, big thanks to Martin Kay of Domo Sofa and Leslie Irvine of LBC, as well as all of the industry sponsors who’ve help me put this campaign together once again. Also thanks to SY Podorange who stood by when I first climbed the mast on day one.
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’ll be editing a video today so keep an eye out for that on my web site.