Well, It’s been a long time since I wrote a progress report and an awful lot of work on the boat has been crammed in since then. Domosofa.com’s mast was seriously delayed and only arrived in Penzance at 0100 the morning of 23rd, and I had to be in with the boat ready to race by the 26th!! With a lot of help from friends, family and Mel Sharp of A2 Rigging, we managed to launch the boat in Penzance harbour, get the rig on and set her up with enough halyards to get me to sea, the rest I would have to rig en-route.

I was fortunately blessed with good weather for the 230 mile single-handed sail to Pornichet, which was essentially domosofa’s first sea trial as well as the first time I had properly sailed her, but the trip was safely completed in a leisurely 57 hours. As we had changed the rig and keel bulb, domosofa had to be re-measured for the Classe Mini rules to make sure her stability hadn’t been compromised, and that she was still within the box rule measurements; to my relief she passed and I just needed to finish of the rigging before the race start in 3 days.

It’s always a scramble for everyone to make sure they have the necessary safety equipment aboard, but on the start line there was an impressive 83 mini’s including me on GBR 500 as well as 4 other British entrants. The Start was all a bit rushed and I ended up practically one of the last over the line, but that was not a big worry for me as the main point of this race was to complete it in one piece in order to guarantee one of the necessary qualifying passages for this years Azores race as well as the 2007 Transat.

The first leg was a long series of tacks to windward up to Belle Isle where we all got stuck in light winds and struggled to work the shifts, I was still very much learning how to sail domosofa, but managed to get her sailing really nicely in the light airs making up a few of the places I had lost at the start. Eventually I rounded the island in the small hours and began the long leg south to Bourgenay. It started as a beat and as we came around Isle de Yeu, the wind had shifted enough to just about fly the big kite. In beautiful sunshine and 10 knots of breeze, domosofa made up some serious ground and as I rounded the southern mark I was in 15th place and ahead of all the other Brits.

That night the wind died completely and although my plan was to stay up all night and try and make some more gains, it wasn’t to be as I fell asleep exhausted at the helm only to wake up several hours later with lots of lights ahead of me and very few astern! Really annoyed with myself, I got 500 back on track and determined myself to make back the stupidly lost places.

The Brits were all keeping in touch on the radio which was a silly thing to do really, as we were all giving out free weather reports, but at least we could see how we were doing relative to each other, and as everybody just wanted to complete the race it was a great help to know what the weather was doing nearby. Over the next 24 hours we had a really mixed bag of weather from squall showers to light airs, to 180 degree wind shifts; all good practice for the doldrums no doubt, but highly frustrating none the less!

That night there was another ‘park up’ as the wind died to a frustrating 2 or 3 knots, but this time I stayed up for the whole night and made some gains, but most frustratingly, those were lost for me at Isle de Groix as I made some stupid and basic tactical errors rounding the island. However, I had a stroke of luck the next day when most of the fleet took a short cut through a reef on the home run and I chose to take a slightly longer route that would give me a freer wind angle. The wind continued to veer throughout the day enabling me to eventual cross the finish line under kite whilst the rest were almost hard on the wind.

My overall finishing position was 23rd out of 83 and 15th out of the 36 protos in the race. So generally I was very pleased with the position as well as annoyed that I lost so many places earlier on. However, I made plenty of observations on ways to improve boat speed, as well as many areas of my racing tactics I need to work hard on.

Now, I am waiting in Pornichet along with Dave Rawlinson, a fellow Cornish mini sailor and PYD skipper, awaiting a good weather window to make a start on our 1000 mile solo qualifiers. We both intend to keep within a reasonable distance of each other during the non stop voyage, for moral as well as safety support, an important factor on such a potentially arduous passage.

Cheers for now, and a really big thanks to everybody who has helped me get this far, including all my sponsors, family and friends.

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