Tales from the TJV

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

For Alex Thomson the Transat Jacques Vabre is not just a yacht race. Sailing with solo sailing hero Roland Jourdain it is back to school for the 30 year old from Gosport.

Last night the first part of our conversation with Thomson had to be cut short when finally they broke out of the high pressure system which has been glued to them over the weekend and out into the Trades.

"We haven’t go a lot of wind here at the moment. The last couple of hours we’ve had 3-4 knots of breeze. It is the ridge we‘re passing through. It shouldn't be long in fact it is just starting to pick up now. And we’ll hopefully be into 12-17 knot for northerly going northeasterly in the next couple of hours.

"We’ve been in this high pressure for nearly two days now, but the angles have been really good. We’ve had 10-15 knots of breeze from the west so we’ve been doing 9-10 –11 knots, so we haven’t really been complaining too much. It is very different for the others to the east.

" Virbac put in a gybe this morning. We thought she was going to come across and sit on our track, because when we come out we are going to have a pretty awesome angle. 120degs - which I what this boat likes more than anything else. So we should be able to pull some miles back.

Since leaving the Bay of Biscay in their wake Sill has taken a more westerly option than the other leaders. "The main game plan was to pass the front on low number three (he giggles) which is what we planned from Ouessant. We were west then and Virbac and Ecover dived south after Finisterre. The models we had showed there would be less breeze there and unfortunately it wasn’t the case. And we sat in a hole for about three hours and probably lost about 20 miles otherwise we would be 20 miles further to the west which would have made all the difference when we went through the front. So a bit disappointing that - it was a hard pill too swallow, because we felt we had done alright then..."

There is call from on deck and Thomson hangs up...An hour later he's back...

"The breeze has filled in…and we've got the genniker up. The breeze is coming from WSW to NW, 10 knots of breeze doing 11 knots at an angle of 120deg. It is insane!

"It is due to continue clocking north over the next few hours in a couple of hours we’ll have the spinnaker up. By the morning it’ll go to the northeast and up to 15 knots and will continue to increase up to about 20. And it’ll be quite nice - a 120 angle all the way down to the Doldrums. Under spinnaker in 18-20 knots we’ll be averaging 16-18 knots. And we won’t have to do anything! The autopilot drives better than we do on that point of sail!"

At present they have broken some gear, says Thomson, but nothing that is going to slow them down. "We’ve had some structural damage at the back of the boat at the end of the upwind stuff. I was on the bucket in back the other day and I looked down and I could see this crack going up and down where the ring frame is supposed to be laminated on to the hull. So I’m pleased we’re out of the upwind stuff. I’ll have to laminate that before my return [Thomson is doing the singlehanded race back from Salvador to La Rochelle]. It is nothing that will stop us sailing. Bilou reckons that because we’ve gone for a carbon solent and a carbon trinquette." The lack of give in these sails combined with severe conditions the boats have experienced in the first days of the TJV have increased the loadings in the hull.

Back to the tactics and Thomson is still peeved about their progress through the front on Friday. "I think we really lucked out a little bit. We were going to pass through that front a long way in front of everyone else, and we passed through it and got into the breeze and then we stopped for about 3-4 hours. Then the breeze came so we put the big kite up. 16-17 knots of breeze, no problem at a very deep angle doing 12 knots and then it popped - it fell out of the sky and went round the rudder and it took us quite a while to drag the bloody thing back in again and we were pretty shattered. At that point having gone through depression after depression and then waiting for the front to happen and we probably should have got a bit more sleep at that stage."

The head had ripped off the sail leaving just the leech tape attached. Fortunately they carry three masthead kites and one fractional - it was the 380sqm, the smallest of the mastheads that took the plunge.

"So we pulled the solent out and put up the small kite up the 1.5 and no sooner had we put it up than we had 30 knots! Which was interesting. We averaged 80 miles in four hours. It was honking. It topped out at 38 knots of breeze. The boat was a complete and utter mess. We were completely shattered. I went and kipped for three hours. There was no way anything was going to wake me up so I tied a bit of string to my arm and gave it to Bilou! When he needed me he pulled on it!

"I went up on deck and it was really howling and we decided to take it down and sail a hotter angle, so we took it down came up 20 degrees and did the same speed with the solent.

"If we had got through the front and hadn’t buggered the spinnaker we would have been on the same latitude as Ecover and Virbac - that was always the plan. We were sure we could get down there, but after all that happened we weren’t going to get down to them. So we decided to play the real west option and at that point it look like the high might stay where it was, but it slowly drifted east and we thought we might get through in the end Ecover didn’t and Virbac did. And the high drifted that way and poor old Mike has been stuck as has PRB and Team Cowes. It is painful situation to be in."

Friday they had 40 knots of breeze and Thomson says the boat speed was sitting on 23 knots and topped out at 25 under main and Solent. Sunday was completely different. "Today was like a day off for us. A bit disappointed the papers didn’t arrive on time! Yesterday it was so nice to take your oilskins off. "

"It is so nice to do this again. [Thomson sailed the TJV four years ago with Josh Hall on board Gartmore]. And Bilou [Roland Jourdain] is such a cool character and a nice guy and a good laugh and I am learning loads and loads. And also I look at things slightly differently and the ways I can improve and do things differently. Bilou is a similar way to the way Josh was with me. I am always quite gung-ho when we were heading into that second low, Bilou wanted to get south to avoid the 60 knots – and I was going we’ve got to get west...and we had 60 knots anyway! We had 62 knots.

"But what a way to learn how to sail this boat."

Now into the Trades Thomson thinks that it will stay this way until Thursday morning (13th) when they will hit the Doldrums. "We only need a one knot average better than Virbac. I don’t think we’ll be far away from them once we get down there."