As the last of the mini fleet safely arrives into Bahia and the skippers reflect on their respective adventures, I guess it’s about time I too wrote of my foreshortened second leg.

I would like to report that I started leg 2 with the same deal of enthusiasm and excitement as I had on leg one, but the truth be told, it wasn’t to be like that in Madeira. The day before the start I dove to clean the boat, only to find to my horror that a fairing plate that blanks off the canting dagger board was not only missing but the surrounding area was ripped and hanging off in three corners leaving a gaping hole and jagged edges in a high pressure area of the bow. Spookily, this is almost exactly what happened in Madeira in 2007!

With less than 20 hours till the start, a repair was impossible. The best I could do was to rip away the rest of the fairing plate and accept that I was to have a massively turbulent hole in the bow section of the boat. On top of this, I also noticed that my pilot screen which had been functioning perfectly up till now was steamed up. On closer inspection, I discovered that the screen had been pushed in and was cracked away from the casing. I turned it on and it seemed to work, so I siliconed up the offending gap and considered myself lucky I had seen it before the start.

The morning of the start I just wanted to get going and so I was the first to be towed out. There is no denying it, I felt depressed. So much money and time invested in this race and all the time a nagging knowledge that the boat could not perform to her maximum. I just had to push it out of my mind and concentrate on tactics. A large and persistent low pressure was dominating the area north of Madeira providing us with strong south-westerly winds, a front to pass through and then a ridge of high pressure to wriggle out of before we managed to get into some sort of trade wind situation. There were a couple of choices, but it looked more certain that the west tack was preferred, it was just a case of how far west and when to tack.

I positioned myself well for the start, and timed it equally satisfactorily, but as soon as I pulled on the keel for power, I was met with a large bang as the shackle on the pulley traveller system exploded. Being right in the thick of start mayhem was no time to go down below, so I just had to sail the first tack with a keel flopping around to leeward until I could get her over onto port and fix it. So, I spent an unusually long time on the next tack, popping my head up every so often as I tried to lash the keel up again, which was actually harder than sounds and it wasn’t until nearly the deguagement buoy that I had a strong enough repair to see us through the frontal systems.

Having sorted out the keel and rounded the buoy, I could finally concentrate on racing, I set 500 up beautifully, my perfect new un-reefed mainsail flattened right out in the 20+ winds, she pointed like a dream and we made good speed. My worries about the hole in the hull were easing as I observed we were keeping pace the fleet head, what would happen in the faster downwind sections remained to be seen. The first night was spent hand steering, permanently dumping the traveller in the gusts until we finally had to concede and put the first reef in as the front neared.

The shift came and over I went. It was earlier than we had expected, so we were all worried about the validity of the forecasts, we would have to keep a close eye on what happened over the next 24 hours.

With the first reef in now, the pilot was having no trouble, so I went down to take my first sleep. All was well through into the morning, the radio sched had put me in a reasonable 17th place and after breakfast I called up some of the guys around me. Whilst chatting to Ollie Bond who was right next to me about the nights proceedings, I noticed the pilot had been quiet for an unusually long period, on closer inspection I found the display was turned off. I pressed the power button, but nothing happened. I tried the wires, looked at the fuses, and checked the batteries... all normal. Then I looked at the display which was steamier than ever, and as I almost cried as I gently pushed it and watched water ooze out.

This was day two, I had over 3000 miles to go and I had lost my giro pilot. My backup pilot was capable of working with lighter loads and no kite, but for spinnaker work and reaching it was next to useless and wouldn’t survive so many hours. I had to stop and find a replacement, my only chance was to alter course for Tenerife. This took me about ten degrees off course, and if the unit was on the shelf, I could be out with about 10 hours lost.

That wasn’t to be the case. The unusual southwest winds meant that North Tenerife was in a wind shadow which took me about 24 hours to sail through and when I did finally arrive, I found that the replacement unit would take a further 24 hours to get there, if I was lucky... seemingly as with most things on this leg, it turned out I wasn’t.

The unit still hadn’t turned up three painful days of limbo later. I was now over 300 miles behind my relative position when I altered course and now in a completely different wind system. There were others who too had stopped, notably Caroline Veille who had managed to repair her boat and leave again before my unit turned up, but for me at least, the race was now over.

I had returned to the mini to be competitive, to get the top ten place I should have in 2007 and that was now impossible. The mini this time was not simply about ‘the challenge’ of the singlehanded transat, I had already achieved that in 2007, it was about performing to the boat’s and my limits and the opportunity of that had now been cruelly stripped from me (thanks Nick Bubb for your kind words in The Daily Sail!) and so, reluctantly and very considerately, I retired.

It seems the unfinished business that I had set out to bring to a close had once again eluded me. It has been an odd feeling watching from home as everyone arrives in Salvador, and brings back many memories of 2007, especially watching the winner Thomas Ruyant arrive valiantly in first place.

Thomas and I had the same design boat in 2007, and we fought tooth and nail in every race. Happily for me, I beat him every time that season except, rather annoyingly, on the last leg of the transat where in the last 24 hours we were literally neck and neck, Thomas more inshore and me offshore. During the day, I got becalmed and the inshore route had it. He beat me by 76 minutes; we were 22nd and 23rd overall respectively.

It just goes to show what a new boat and all the time in the world to train can achieve. Bravo Thomas and all the other competitors who have completed yet another successful edition of one of the toughest races out there, the Mini Transat!

Now, the boat is on a ship and should arrive back in the UK in a few days and my focus now pulls to preps on Leslie Irvine’s and my entry in the 2010 ‘Shetland Round Britain and Ireland’ race onboard ‘Streamline’, a Koopmans VQ32.

My overall vision is still distantly settled on the seemingly impossible dream of the Vendee, but closer to my horizon, I will be looking at putting a 40 campaign together this year. The class 40 was a brilliant conception; exciting, affordable, yet big enough to take on a world race and without the communication restrictions of the minis, fully in the media’s attention.

Cheers for now and thank you so much everyone once again for supporting me, it really is most appreciated, thanks.

Woody

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