Sleep-deprived Sam

Sam Davies, in remarkably eloquent form, talks about the first leg of the Solitaire du Figaro

Sam Davies finished 25th of the 42 competitors in the first leg of the Solitaire du Figaro. While this doesn't sound like much of a result, it is in fact a considerable achievement considering this is her first Solitaire du Figaro in a class she has only been sailing in for the last four months. To put it into perspective, she finished a place ahead of former Figaro and Whitbread winner Lionel Pean, Mini hot shot Arnaud Boissieres (28th), the other girl in the race Jeanne Gregoire (31st), trimaran skipper Loick Peyron (37th) and Figaro/Mini hotshot Ronan Guerin (40th).

Her start on Wednesday was less than ideal. "I didn’t hear the 10 minute gun. Luckily I raced back to the right end by looking at where the good guys were heading for and that paid off. I tacked off, because I knew I’d never make it to the pin because I wasn’t prepared properly. Normally I tack off and then I cross half the fleet, which is what I did."

From Les Sables d'Olonne the Figaro boats headed south to a mark off Ile de Re near La Rochelle. "Then it was crazy racing around the cans stuff which I really enjoy, but it is hard when you know you’re on a 500 mile race and you’ve got to go balls out for a day racing around the cans, hoisting and dropping and tacking. For example it’s really hard to know what to wear (!), because you never get a chance to change - you’ve got to not be too hot or too cold and dry and not wet because you’ve got to stay in the same clothes for the next four days. So you have to be clever about all of that."

Then there is getting into inshore/offshore modes. "You get slightly offshore but you’re sailing around the cans and a few people are not so good at doing their manoeuvres. I was coming down to the buoy off Ile de Re and I had this guy next to me and he was down below and first he nearly crashed into me, so I avoided him, and pulled up the genoa ready to round and it looked like he was going to round the mark the other way. And I was going 'is it really a starboard rounding?' So I rounded it, dropped my spinnaker and he just kept going - leaving the buoy to port. And I was thinking 'have I done it the right way?' And he had just completely mistimed it because he was in offshore mode. So I rounded in this massive panic, dived down below to read the sailing instructions, but I was fine. So there are a few people making silly mistakes in manoeuvres, but I was quite good at thinking ahead, which I have to because I’m not as strong as the guys. Gildas Morvan [one of the race favourites and skipper of Cercle Verte], used to be a rugby player - he can probably wang his genoa up in two seconds and just pull on it and the halyard tension will be okay, whereas I have to use a winch."

In a longish race like this the skippers have to think about the weather/tides, but primarily, says Sam, it is about boat-on-boat tactics. "That's because the fleet is so close or it's the case for me anyway, because I’m not good enough to be in the top five. Then it is probably a bit different because you can make decisions based on the weather a bit more. When you are further back in the fleet you are making decisions based on where the rest of the fleet have positioned themselves, because you want to try and not be in debt and then the second priority is the tide and the weather. And like any big one design fleet you have to be in clear air and that is hard with 40 boats – that is more than the Farr 40 Worlds. The fleet size is pretty awesome…"

From Ile de Re the boats had to sail back up the coast of France heading for a turning mark off Lorient. "It was quite breezy to start, sailing upwind and quite rough as well. But it is cool when you are racing that close upwind at night and you are tacking and ducking and using the ColRegs rather than the Racing Rules so some windward-leeward situations are reversed.

"Under the ColRegs you always give way to the other boat if you can see their red light basically. So sometimes in a windward-leeward situation if you are on starboard, the leeward boat can’t luff you. So you have to be a bit careful. And there is this theoretical one in the race rules where you have to stay more than two boat lengths away from anyone at any time in the dark."

During the night the wind was unstable. "People were going from second place to 20th. So I was just really trying to never be maximum one side or the other. And I got a shift quite nicely right and gained quite a bit in the middle of the night and I didn’t lose it too much after that and that got me into the pack a bit."

In the night she also hit something, but there was no damage. "And a big blob of oil from the Prestige landed on the bow. A few people had that. That was horrible and apparently it is really common still."

When dawn broke the first morning (Thursday) the wind was dropping. "So it was big gear changes, because you are going from being too overpowered with your sail combination to trying to get maximum power because there are not many sails - you don’t change your sail, you just change the shape of them and the trim.

"It was cloudy when daybreak came so there was not much change of sea breeze so I didn’t go straight in to the coast as the gradient was supposed to be zero and the gradient for a good sea breeze was supposed to coming in later.

"The wind was supposed to be going left and so I tacked out away from most of the boats I was with. Marseilles Enterprises was the only other boat with me - that was the only time in the race when I could only see one other boat. And we went for quite a long time, maybe 10 miles, but I was conscious that I was tacking way to the left and I was conscious I was going to be the furthest left boat and I didn’t want to do that so I was desperately waiting for a shift to tack back on but it took ages for that happen, but when it came it was good and it paid off. But it turned out there was another pack even further left, who actually did much worse. I came out looking quite good."

Skandia headed for Belle Ile (the big island off Quiberon Bay) where Sam thought she would find the best sea breeze. "I did and I made loads of gains because it lifted the breeze perfectly, but for the fact that then I had to pass inside Belle Ile and there was a transision phase in the breeze. I was hoping to get sucked along the coast of Belle Ile but instead there was a big patch of absolutely no wind. So I gained loads and then I got sucked into this area of no wind and the tide hadn’t turned, and it was lucky because Loick Peyron was there, showing me there was a big patch of no wind – he was stuck there with his spinnaker up trying to get out of the hole."

Fortunately at the time Sam didn't realise it was the 60ft trimaran skipper. "I thought it was Marc Emig, so I thought ‘good, that’s another bizuth down’ so I went offshore a little bit and I managed to just drift round and get through this gap of wind against the current. And Loick never made it. I went down below to look to see how much further it would be to go around Belle Ile (because the wind was behind Belle Ile) and it was an extra 15 miles, so no way was it worth it. Anyway I got through and the guy who I thought was Marc Emig, turned around and sailed off around Belle Ile. And I’m glad I didn’t realise it was Loick Peyron, because I think I might have followed him. And it was very lucky I didn’t because he ended up last… What would you do if you saw Loick Peyron and you didn’t quite know what you were doing? So I ended up at the back of the pack which went right."

At this point the fleet had divided between those who went inshore of Belle Ile and those, including many of the Figaro rock stars, who didn't. Skandia was at the back of the former pack. "I was ahead of Michel Desjoyeaux for a while. I was thinking, I can’t do this - I’m forbidden to do this!" They port tack fetched up to the gate off Lorient before turning to sail to the finish line at Bilbao.

During the first 24 hours of the race, Skandia had been experiencing autopilot problems and leaving the pilot to steer was just too slow in the waves. As a result Sam got no sleep. "So I didn’t really use the pilot until the wind dropped. And then I messed around trying to put a spinnaker up and the next thing I know - I’m lying on the cockpit floor and the sails are flapping and the boat that was just in front of me was now half a mile in front. I had just fallen asleep completely by accident. And because I didn’t know I was falling asleep I didn’t set an alarm and it wasn’t in my head that I was going to sleep so I didn’t wake myself up. So I slept for about 20 minutes. And I lost loads there at quite a critical time."

Sam was lucky - another skipper admitted falling asleep accidentally and woke up two hours later. Even the highly experienced singlehanded Loick Peyron admitted he had fallen foul of this. "So that was bad and it taught me a lesson. From then on I was good with my sleeping. I was fully catnapping - 10 minute sleeps, 15 minutes maximum. Before that I’d been resting by not proper sleeping. But it is so hard when you have all this adrenalin in you…"

Sam found it best to sleep in her comfy purpose-built helmsman's seat. "I’d be sleeping at the helm in my seat. You can just have the tiller extension on your knee. So you sleep well, because you know if anything happens, all you have to do is open your eyes and the tiller extension is there and you can disengage the pilot. But I woke after the first couple of catnaps I had and I was completely disorientated. I couldn’t see what lights were what at night - you’re not sure if it land or ships - it is scary, it is dangerous and you are so knackered and you wake up and you are completely off the planet - that kind of scared me. And it is so hard not to get that tired."

Sam says she had expected her sleeping to be an issue but says it is hard to prepare for it anywhere else other than in a race environment, otherwise you don't have to deal with the same adrenaline rush.

The sail south to Spain could have been quite processional, but in fact it wasn't. "There were patches of no wind and quite a few people made big gains and the crowd that went outside of Belle Ile managed to catch up when everyone got stuck in a hole where we were upwind before the new breeze came. We were basically in a little high pressure - there was some gradient from the cold front coming down from England and we just managed to trickle in that gradient and the people who got in that first did well. It was to the west of the rhumb line when you’d think you should go to the coast on the way back down.

"Then there was a high ridge coming in and the low over Spain meant that the wind should be northeasterly but we were still in the westerly gradient from the cold front. So we knew there was going to be a shift to the northeast coming down there, so I positioned myself to the west of the pack so that when the shift came I could gybe and I would be on the better course. But then I realised that the weather information I had showed it was shifting so fast to the east that if I stayed to take the shift too far I might not make it under spinnaker on the layline on the new gybe in the new breeze. So in fact I gybed early as soon as it hinted of shifting to head up to be on high side of layline to be on port gybe to the finish. For a while it looked bad because the wind dropped off and I needed height when I had to stay low, but in the end it did come back east and I made it on one tack. And that’s where I gained three miles." Had she not gained three miles she would have finished in the mid-30s.

Skandia crossed the line at 1am (BST) Sunday and to give an idea of the closeness the three boats ahead of her finished in the space of one minute before her... "Coming into the finish line there were boats tacking everywhere and anyone else would think we’d just started but we had been racing for four days."

25th is better than Sam hoped for. "I am pleased. I am more pleased with the fact that because there were eight boats three miles in front of me and I managed to catch up to touching distance of them. And I crossed the line in parallel with Crepes Whaou and Sander [Bakker]. There were only seconds separating us and there are only 15 minutes between the first bizuth and me, because we are on elapsed time for this and not points. So I’m just going to keep this conservative strategy for the rest of the race and not go too wild or crazy."

After crossing the line it was still not over - there was four miles to get to the marina in Bilbao. "Everyone finishes at the same. You cross the finish line and prop shafts are sealed so we can’t put the engine on and it was upwind short tacking to get to the marina at 2am. So there’s 40 boats doing this, still ducking although the race is finished.

"Then you sign your finish declaration and they give you a ticket and everyone sits down and has dinner together. But it’s funny because it is such a sombre atmosphere. There is bearly anyone talking because they’re all so exhausted. There were a couple of people having a small conversation, a couple were having a beer, but everyone was so exhausted that is all you can do. And because there were bearly any results from it and everyone was so close no one was celebrating. Yann Elies [the winner] had some champagne but it’s such a long way to go yet there was no real emotion."

Sam made it back to the hotel 5am, but has no recollection of getting there or to her room. "When I came back down this afternoon - I had no idea how to get to the boat…"

She reckons she needs one more good sleep before she will be in good shape. "Because it was light winds, it wasn’t physically hard, so my muscles don’t hurt. So it could be a lot, lot worse and I’m sure it will be after one of these legs." She is going to attempt during the stopovers not to sleep full nights so that she doesn't lose the rhythm.

Three more legs like this lie ahead of her. "I was just thinking ‘my god, I can’t believe I have to do this again three more times’ and just the thought of having to push that hard non-stop for four days three more times and having that many boats that good around you - when you think about it it seems physically impossible to do. So it is a daunting task and I try not to think about it too much."

The second leg of the Solitaire du Figaro, more or less back the way they have come but finishing in La Rochelle, starts tomorrow (Tuesday).