How I raced 2500 miles alone at sea - La Solitaire du Figaro 2021
Truth be told writing this blog to close off La Solitaire, I am really struggling with how to put a month of racing onto paper. Every time I put pen to paper, I end up writing an extremely dull list of every tactical decision that I made during this race, that would end up being something akin to what my school teachers used to call ‘death by PowerPoint’. Maybe some of these struggles are the result of extreme tiredness. I am finding that by 4 in the afternoon, exhaustion is getting the better of me and coherent thoughts become rarer. I can only imagine what living like this permanently must be like. I find myself looking back thinking, how on earth did I actually race that far and for that long?
I guess I should start with documenting my highest of highs and lowest of lows. For me the greatest moment of personal satisfaction was the final 400 miles, from the Fastnet Rock off the South West Coast of Ireland to the finish in Saint Nazaire in South Brittany. I found a confidence or speed, not entirely sure which came first, where the weather was really tricky but I found that my research with a Met office meteorologist was exact, the cloud forms, rain characteristic played out as planned. We raced through the middle of a low pressure. There was a beautiful moment, I knew which clouds to sail under, carefully stayed under them and managed to pass several competitors in the chaos. And for the first time all race, breakaway from them.
My lowest moment came in the 3rd leg, I was suffering the effects of food poisoning almost straight after the start. Despite getting into a good position, I had no interest racing, someone tried to overtake me and I remember being incredibly irritated and wanted to say buddy just hurry up and overtake me. I so wanted to stop after the first 90 miles after sailing from Le Havre to the Isle of Wight. Told myself to try to push onto Weymouth and see if I felt better. At one point I found myself in the bottom of the boat shivering. Got to Weymouth, forced myself to race to Land’s End. Turning the corner towards the Bristol Channel, I managed to re-catch the leaders and after being 20miles down I was now 0.5 miles behind the leaders. I said to myself you can’t stop now David; first place is right there. That was seriously hard to deal with.
When you race single handed, your priorities are as follows; route, am I going in the correct direction, performance is the boat going fast, the human, have I eaten and drunk enough water, are the batteries charged so that the electrics are working and finally have I slept enough? I would love to tell you that at all times I stuck to this order of priorities but sleep and eating definitely made their way to the top several times.
We sleep through a series of naps, 15 minutes here 15 minutes there. The sleeping aspect was probably the aspect of this that presented the greatest sense of trepidation. During the race I was aiming for nine 15 minutes naps in a day for a total of 2 and half hours. I’ve read that the greatest solo ocean racers are morning people, I guess that’s because we have to wake up 9 times a day. The trick I’ve learnt to sleeping while sailing in to never let yourself fall into a deep sleep. I will never forget the first 24-hour training session and the feeling of actually managing this this. A mix of an anticlimactic disbelief that something that sounds so crazy is actually possible and as strange as it sounds rather anticlimactic in its efficiency. The trick to racing while you sleep, I’m still figuring that one out I did find myself making a habit of losing places while sleeping, but then again maybe that’s normal?
Living like this does lead to some funny moments, because of course you are awake for most of the day. On the 3rd day of the 3rd leg my day began like each during the solitaire at midnight, making high risk sail selection decision in an attempt to make up time to the group in front, having a close battle with my friend Jesse Fielding, the wind completely turning off, thick fog descending and reducing visibility to meters and lastly managing to catch 2 other competitors. I checked my watch expecting the time to read 6pm as I felt that sufficient had happened that day that I could be rewarded with a lovely sunset soon enough. It was only midday. I still had another 9 hours of day light to go.
Racing by yourself requires much more self-discipline than I originally appreciated or understood as at all times you must be prepared; you simply cannot sail by being reactionary. Changes to the boats set up must be made before the weather conditions change, sleeping before you become tired and trying to anticipate what your rivals will do before they make their move. It boils down to a Risk vs Reward, the reward for making a change at the exact moment is big, the penalty for doing it early small, the penalty for making the change late huge, both in terms of time lost on the race course and the physically effort required to fight against either the boat or the weather.
Despite not knowing how I could perform over a month of racing, I started with dreams of a ground breaking results. A more realistic aim was to sail a clean and tidy race with few mistakes. My dreams of doing something special came crashing back to land when on day 3 when at midnight I became entangled in a fishing trawling net that had been dumped in the Bay of Biscay 100 miles of the coast of Spain. The time lost followed by the penalty for outside assistance as I needed the net to be pulled out cost me that. I will not let this story turn into a sop story about what could have been. Ocean racing involves misfortune and it’s how you deal with it, all 34 skippers in the race have some tale of overcoming extraordinary problems and the difference is that mine were very publicly showed. I will say I really wish the organizers had not brought the fishing net to the race village as a reminder of what happened.
Maybe its human nature to become frustrated in when something you are passionate about isn’t going as well as you’d like, at the beginning my lack of speed was the main source of frustration, being left behind with ease and have to work super hard to stay with the group. By the end of the race, I had found some settings that resolved the speed issue and I could break away from the group I was in. Only to have the wind become stronger for the competitors behind and have them catch up. I had to tell myself that this issue was a better issue than the one I faced 2000 miles previous
I generally consider myself to be a calm person, I have been involved in ocean racing in a team environment for several years and have faced many challenges and though that I would carry this calm demeanor into the world of elite solo racing. But I did not expect to internalize issues as much as I did. It’s easy to let your mind spiral out of control when small things are going wrong and let them become much bigger issues than they really are. It took a conscious talking to, to set myself on a good path again.
I will confess I did get external help to break out of these cycles. There is a saying that Dolphins carry the souls of sailor’s past. Now I have no idea how true that is, but what I will say was when you’re on your own and mentally down, Dolphins have a remarkable habit of cheering you up. During that faithful third leg it was the middle of the night, in was in last place, there was no wind and it was chucking it down with rain. I was in the bottom of might boat being rather miserable about the situation, from beneath I could hear a chattering sound. Jumped on deck, shone my touch around the boat and could see a pod of dolphins around me. The sounds I was hearing in the boat were the pod chatting to each other and occasionally bumping into the boat.
What I am most proud of about this project is that the Solitaire and the French Elite Offshore Championship are comprised of people widely regarded to be ‘special talents’, truth being told I am not nor will I ever considered to be that. I am some of who really enjoys being on the sea, at this point it’s probably more of an obsession. I managed to put together a project seriously lacking in resources that could go toe to toe and not be a walk over against these guys and girls. I guess if there are any lessons from my Solitaire it’s that hard work and enjoyment can get you very far.
