First female winners

Pia L'Obry and Liz Wardley take line honours in final leg of Mini class' Demi-Cle

Pia L'Obry and Liz Wardley on Morph'Eau

Zut alors! A female duo winning a race in the Mini Open 6.50 offshore skiff class, the domain normally of roughty toughty Vendee Globe wannabes? Such a happening came to pass last night when Swedish sailor Pia L'Obry and Australian former Amer Too bowwoman Liz Wardley cruised across the Lorient finish line to take first place in the offshore leg down from Baltimore in southern Ireland and second overall in the Mini class' Demi Cle race. madfor sailing believes it to be the first occasion there has ever been a female winner in a Mini race.

Liz Wardley (left) described how they had fared: "It was upwind up to Fastnet and we were doing all right at the start and then we lost the plot a bit in the current and ended up out the back door and we managed to catch up to about fourth by the time we got to the Rock. Then it was chute up and we basically didn't take it down for 48 hours!

"The first afternoon it seemed that everyone was going to head out to sea and keep going and we did the same and then in the morning All Mer, the boat which was leading the regatta, we saw them gybe in, so we gybed in with them and basically we just covered them for the rest of the way. We couldn't hear any of the position reports so we didn't know where any of the other boats were. We thought we were both out the back door. Then we came across the finish line and it was like 'well done!'"

The girls arrived last night at 10.30pm. All Mer, the leading boat overall, sailed by Frédéric Duthil et Cédric Gourmelen, arrived 1.5 hours later. "When it went dark last night we lost sight of them and we gybed off and then gybed back," continued Wardley. "We went into a fog back. It turned out the rest of the fleet was in the fog back for a day and a half and we only had it for a few hours..."

Wardley, perhaps modestly, put their win down to the speed of their Pierre Rolland-designed Mini. "The boat seemed really fast. We were around All Mer all the time. Once we got around the Rock and got going with the kite up we had pace to burn. It was awesome. Whenever we got into straight line sailing with All Mer for a few hours we'd just sail away from them." So what was it? The sails? "The sails aren't new. It just seems really slippery. It's not that easy to sail, we had a lot of rudder cavitation, but we just keep pushing all the time.

"Basically we did VMG sailing, a few people went towards the Scillies, but there was nothing really tactical, about it when we saw we were going the wrong way, we just gybed! In the morning, we couldn't see anyone because everyone was going really high and fast. We kept our speed up but soaked low when we could, so we lost contact with the fleet. Then we saw All Mer on the other gybe going in and then we covered and just kept covering all the time."

As in the Mini-Fastnet earlier this year, the ride back from Ireland had been a blast. "The wind didn't get above 20 knots. We had some light and some heavy. We never had to reef. There were a couple of times we probably should have. When you are pushing that hard, you really don't want to put a reef in..."

In such instances there was little opportunity for sleep either. The girls attempted to keep a watch with one of them driving two hours on/off at night or three hours during the day, although Wardley admitted that in reality it never worked out this way as there was always something to do. "We broached a couple of time. We had a lot of rudder cavitation, and sometimes you just could not steer the boat. The boat is really quite fickle particularly if you don't have the weight in the right place."

From when we last spoke to her in Ireland, Wardley has revised her opinion about her own campaign for the Mini Transat. Rather than wait for the 2005 race, she wants to attempt the 2003 one. "Ahh mate, it's like I have to do one. You can't not.... I REALLY want to do the next race now. For the time frame I've got to look at chartering a boat or buying one already here and get my qualification done. I'm pretty excited about it now." This will be easier said than done. The Mini-Transat is usually heavily oversubscribed. In 2001 there were more than 100 applicants for the 55 places, so qualifying early is a must.

The Demi-Cle was open to both single and double handed entries and while the two handers obviously won the top places, the lead singlehander was British competitor Ian Munslow.

Ian finished just after 6am this morning arriving in eleventh place overall. After the race Ian spoke to madforsailing: "It's great, I'm really pleased. It'll be strange having to actually do something at the prize giving tomorrow night! The leg back form Cork was pretty much downwind all the way. I made a bad call with the meteo early on but managed to hang on. I still have a lot to sort out with the boat. I have a lot of work to do on the upwind ability, and I really need a fractional code 0, but that can wait, I'm knackered and need some sleep...."

Ian had managed surfs of up to 15kts and the downwind ability of his Owen Clarke-designed Mini kept him at the head of the single-handed fleet and in touch with the boats sailing two up.

The race is being run using a points system with the first and last legs to and from Ireland score double points over the shorter second leg form Cork to Baltimore. An eleventh place in the first leg and the same again in the third should see him take first place over nearest solo rival Cian McCarthy. Cian, also sailing an Owen Clarke design, was leading the single-handed division until his bowsprit failed and seriously hindered his downwind ability.

Briton Nick Bubb finished 12th on the this final leg, and is now preparing himself for his solo qualifying 'cruise', upon completion of which he will be the second Brit, behind Ian Munslow, to qualify for next year's Transat.

Ian Munslow - first singlehander