Duo Guy Cotton - Team last minute

When I last posted, I was on my way to something top secret, that being the Duo Guy Cotten, the Solo Guy Cotten, the first round of the 2025 French Elite Offshore Championship—double-handed with Calanach Finlayson. Cal sent me a text asking if I’d be up for doing the race with him. Now, when a world champion asks to team up with you, you say yes. I would apologize to those with whom I had to cancel my plans, but in truth, I’m not really sorry, as I would 100% do the same again.

Cal is doing the Transat Paprec with his usual co-skipper, Maggie Adamson; however, life commitments meant she was unavailable for the race, so I was lucky enough to be the substitute to help with their project in the build-up for their big race of the season.

The Astreks
In the world of Figaro’s’, people spend every day from January to mid-March training, looking for speed, refining their settings, and optimizing their boats. Cal had the boat for one week, and we had one day of training for the race. Logically speaking, there was no way to win against that disadvantage. Our aim was to help prepare for the Transat, learn, not break the boat and have fun, because given how last minute it all was, we didn’t stand much of a chance.

Sadly Jules and Ed were faster at overtaking us than the photographer was at taking our picture of us in 1st

Plot twist

Yes, logically speaking, we didn’t stand a chance of achieving a good result, but maybe it’s optimism or maybe there’s a hopeless romantic deep inside everyone that believes the word impossible is just 2 letters too long.

The first day’s racing featured a nice 30-mile course around the Glenans’ Archipelago, and after a shaky start, we, along with everyone else, discovered something: Cal and David, the last-second entry, were Rocketship fast—so fast that we were leading at the first buoy. However, the lack of training didn’t take long to catch up with us; our maneuvers were just a little slower and somewhat inconsistent resulting in some damage to our big spinnaker. As a result, we didn’t hold this lead for the entire day.

Day 2
Each morning began the same way: a look at the weather over coffee, with a bowl of porridge for Cal and muesli for me. That morning, we noticed a trap that the Bay of Concarneau had waiting for us. Off the start line, in fickle 7 knots of wind, we tacked off. If only we could go back in time and honestly scream at ourselves, because we were about to go straight into the trap that we knew all about. As the race went on, we got further into the trap and fell behind. We made fewer mistakes than the day before; however, the one mistake we did make took us out of contention. A painful lesson learned—a lesson learned, though!

The Grand Course
The real reason we were here: 48 hours of racing around the islands of Bretagne Sud, a racetrack filled with plenty of ‘furniture’—islands, tricky tides, wind holes, and more. As with every race I’ve ever done in Concarneau, it started in warm sunshine and light winds, with a forecast expecting us to sail through some abject miserable conditions. We started well, sticking to our plan in the opening dance of the race, and when the fleet regrouped in the middle of the Glenans, we were right in the thick of the battle for the lead.

Leaving the Glenans and heading fast toward the Point du Penmarch, the race became defensive. The eventual winners, Jules and Ed, unleashed a high mode upwind, slowing the race and controlling it. We were kept under their thumb with no option to escape. As we raced ever closer to the shoreline, the battle for position now meant dancing between rocks (an insurance company’s favourite). With Cal concentrating on speed and me on positioning, we worked well together.

Lots of fun on this race track

With a magnificent March sunset, we dodged rocks and suddenly encountered fishing equipment. Then, our race came to a halt—we got hooked on a piece of fishing gear. In the fight to free ourselves, we lost 3.2 miles. A lifetime in this close racing, and the sailing gods hadn’t finished punishing us yet; our own personal wind hole, so we ended up almost 5 miles back.

36 Hours to Go
“It’s not over until we cross that line,” we told ourselves. One opportunity—that's all we need. Almost immediately we tried a desperation move that was very high risk, not long into this move we decided it best to ‘manage the risk.’

Rounding the most northerly point of the track, we positioned ourselves further east than others in anticipation of a change in wind direction. As we entered dense fog at about 2 AM on Thursday morning, our moment presented itself with a significant wind direction change that meant we had taken a more direct route to the next buoy. We were back with the group and not in last place, rounding the buoy off the Isle de Sein.

The Transition
Daylight should have revealed our positioning; however, the thick fog persisted until mid-afternoon, where we found ourselves a further offshore than the group. We expected a light patch with the passage of a small center of high pressure over us. This came, but not at the place we thought it would, which unsettled us and left us unsure of our positioning. We hesitated and took the middle ground, which meant we got the worst of both worlds: we sailed extra distance and had less wind—a lose/lose combination. Our misery was further compounded when, 26 miles from the southerly turning point, our big spinnaker repair began to break. Taking the prudent approach, we swapped to a smaller sail and watched as the fleet left us in their wake as were sailed 20% slower than anyone else.

At midnight, we were back where we were 24 hours ago… dead stone last, 3 miles behind, rounding the southerly point of the track.

The Final Sprint

With no major strategy options left, we had to exploit every tiny element over the final 70 miles, from getting inventive with the tides to passing islands in different places and trying to be slightly faster with every sail change. From 1 AM on Friday morning to noon, we sailed the best we had during the entire race. We discovered a few things that, well, I’ll be keeping a secret (I hope you’ll forgive me for keeping performance things a secret). Une petit front froid (to be read in your finest French accent) the final hurdle and last chance to overtake anyone in front of us.

We crossed the finish line in 5th place, which, considering our lack of preparation, is an incredible result. However, we were seriously fast and made a lot of good decisions which fuels the Figaro fire deep inside me —yes, a few wrong ones, and we were inconsistent. Overall, we were happy with our performance, even if we were disappointed with the result. Our aim was to learn, and oh boy did we learn a lot! So that was the biggest win.

Cal, I really hope we get to sail together again one day because that was a lot of fun. (P.S. Thanks for putting up with my terrible attempt at a Scottish accent!).

Good luck to Cal and Maggie on the Transat!