Mini Fastnet 2010

Posted Jun 24, 01:29 AM · 0 Comments

For the 2010 Mini Fastnet I sailed on Mini 435 “Tchuda Popka” with Vincent Kerbouriou. #435 is a Pogo 2, which meant that we sailed in the slower Series class with 40 other competitors. (There were 72 starters overall.)

I arrived in Douarnenez on Wednesday morning in order to prepare the boat and do some training with Vincent. The training did not happen until Friday as the harbour entry was blocked by fifty other Minis. Instead we spent the time making some adjustments to the boat, including replacing some cracked high-load blocks.

In France every major offshore race has a prologue, a short inshore race around buoys, which is meant for the public and the media. For our prologue we also had the previous owner Charlie Dalin onboard to help get the boat up to speed. Charlie finished second in last years Transat and knows #435 inside out, so having him onboard was very valuable.

After an early start, a general recall and a black flag for the next start, we came off the line clean and sailed into third place, which is a very good result considering the level of the fleet. (A black flag means that any early starters would have been disqualified.)

Mini 429 before the start of the prologue

However, the real race only started on Sunday. Unfortunately with some difficulties: Our survival water container was leaking and had to be replaced and resealed by the race officials just minutes before we were due to be towed out of the harbour.

After the start we headed north on the beat—along with less than a third of the fleet. But by the first mark we were lying fifth, with the rest of the fleet that went the other way behind us.

We kept this position and were actually gaining on other boats, but suddenly lost a lot of speed as soon as we exited the Chenal du Four and were passed by a couple other boats. Only later did it occur to us that we might have had some algue wrapped around the keel.

Weed or not—it became fairly irrelevant as the wind piped up to full gale-force during the night. Minis are built for downwind sailing: wide and flat. To crash upwind in the dark across waves almost as tall as the boat is long is therefore pretty tough on both boat and crew.
To put the weather into proportion for non-sailors you have to imagine having a cold shower blind-folded, with the shower on a bus in stop-and-go city traffic.

During the first night we also lost our wind instruments; either due to a gust or the continuous wave impacts. We only managed to climb the mast and fix it in one of the light wind patches after Fastnet Rock. However, other than that we had a fairly smooth crossing. One boat lost their mast, others tore their mainsail or broke sailbattens. Numerous boats retired because of bad cases of seasickness.

Rounding Fastnet Rock

One of the four chase-boats waiting for the fleet near Fastnet Rock

By the time we rounded Fastnet Rock, the wind had gone very light and patchy. We weren’t in fifth place either—even though we had stayed within the top-ten during the gale, we had chosen to tack too early in the English Channel, which put us back in the twenties.

While slightly disappointed with our position we continued to press on and overtook boats all the way back to Douarnenez. In the end we finished 18th. The race leaders had managed to avoid the light patches and were uncatchable by this point. In fact one of the faster prototypes broke the racerecord in only 3 days 16 hours.

Close reaching on the return leg of the 2010 of the Mini Fastnet under medium spi