Tales from the TJV

We speak to Alex Thomson on board Sill and Paul Larsen on Open 50 leader Hellomoto

Paul Larsen won the 50ft class in the Transat Jacques Vabre two years ago with Alex Bennett on Pete Goss' old Aqua Quorum . This year the defending champion has returned and is sailing with Conrad Humphreys on board the Motorola-sponsored Groupe Finot-designed Open 50 Hellomoto :

Sunday night and the duo were trying to make it around the top of Madeira. "We’re always terribly worried about parking up in the wind shadows of these islands. At the moment we are on a course of about 210deg and we would like to keep to the west of the fleet, because we are hoping to get into the northwesterlies before anyone else. And we have a couple of days of really tricky conditions and we are always looking behind us because that Defi Vendee [the newer Berret/Racoupeau designed Open 50] is going to be very quick out of the Doldrums so we want to get as big a buffer as we can.

"You don’t feel very comfortable at all having a lead at this stage because you think that you’re just going to park right up and everyone will sail up to us. It is a funny race like that.

"Today was the first day we could really start to dry things out which was nice. It has been a bit of slog so far. It hasn’t been that comfortable at all."

There is a loud CRASH at this point... "That’s the boat saying hello – you can imagine what upwind was like..."

"It is a different race from last time. Then it took us a week to get to the Canaries and 18 days to do the whole thing. And here we are - eight days into it and we are putting up a kite for the first time and we are still not even at Madeira yet. It is crazy.

"We’ve got plenty of food. No worries there. We were sitting here laughing at all the things we missed, because we have been sailing on board with our girls on board, both Conrad and myself, and it is all the little things: the petry oil for the boots and the talcum powder for the gunnel bum and we bring four bottles of red wine and a sick bag and think we are ready to go to sea! We are living like kings, but never mind!

"At present we’ve got about 5-6 knots of wind. We are quite strapped with the kite just trying to create a bit of apparent. There is still a bit of a lump left over from last night so the kite is flopping around, but we are just trying to keep the momentum going and we are trying to dry a few things out.

"For the last few days it has been very squally - it has been hard to settle on one sail combination and just relax. You are always trimming and adjusting and going off course and contemplating your next change, so it has been quite busy. Boat is still 100% and now we have got the pilot back up that is a real bonus. That was absolutely manic.

For the first four-five days Humphreys and Larsen were sailing without an autopilot. "You always think - no problem you can just handsteer. But it is stupid little things: You are that knackered while you are steering, because it is a boring thing just sitting there, but if you have got a pilot at least you can walk away, go and trim something, make a cuppa and then steer and steer and steer. But just having to be glued to it while the other guy is asleep and you need to try and let him sleep as much as possible so then he can let you sleep as much as possible.

"So you change over and you go and try and get your two hours sleep which is just golden after a bashing. And then you go, 'I’ll just check one last thing before I go down'. And you go and have a look at the leech of the staysail, which is flapping a little bit and you find the leech line has broken in half, so that is a two hour job and the guy steering can’t do anything, so you go to do it and you need that sail because it is an important sail. So you sit there and you are just losing time and time and time. And sure, you could say 'forget it', but you know the other guys are out there and it is always in the back of your mind…

"If it was a singlehanded race, then you’d think that everyone else is going to have their problems and downtime and it won’t be that critical, but because you know everyone is probably going 100%, then you have got to have all the gear up and be on the pace all the time. So it is a real crazy sort of thing.

"Anyway it was such a relief once Conrad got the pilot going. We didn’t say anything – we just collapsed.

"We have got one Raymarine system and one B&G system and each one had a different series of problems and we had to mix and match. And one bit didn’t talk to another bit and one doesn’t speak to that bit, so it turned into a bit of a monty. We thought we tried one sequence which we didn’t and we went back and tried it again and it worked!

"So we’re fine and fit again and we are ready for whatever it throws at us now. So it is game on. As on as we get into the trades, I think we are going to do some nice work. I just hope we get there still with a nice little lead over these guys and see what we can’t do out of the Doldrums. That’s what makes it such a fun race. It’ll never just be a drag race this one. There’s plenty to win or lose.

On page two Alex Thomson updates us on how it is going out to the west in class one on second-placed Sill