Hi… remember me?
I know I know I said I would keep this blog updated more regularly and I promised myself that I would write 10-12 blog posts this year. I also promised myself that I would only publish content that I was proud to share, proud of the work I’d put in and that it made sense to communicate. I wasn’t going to share something for the sake of sharing but more because I had something meaningful to share.
Back to reality.
I find myself in an office for more time than I really want to, it’s not quite the thrill of racing a figaro 3 alone but then again, it’s nice to have a regular salary for the first time in 3 years. This job has given me a new game to play which is to freak out French clients by suddenly switching language mid conversation, je suis désolée Henri pour hier mais j'avais besoin de m'entraîner à parler français!
(Se il mio capo sta leggendo questo blog, l'ho fatto solo per cercare di impressionarl e non lo faccio tutti i giorni)
Taken today I would have much the same photo, pen in hand at 100% concentration.
Its strange not having a 10-meter racing yacht in my life to look after; on one hand I am enjoying not having to shoulder the immense financial stress of a solo ocean racing project, questioning how I am going to keep up with the development race, how I am going to pay invoices each week and how I am going to feed myself. The stress all adds up and I needed this break even if I didn’t want or ask for this break. On the other hand, I do miss it a lot, the friendships I’d made, the thrill and the amount I was sailing before.
I cannot wait to be back to racing within inches of rivals
Looking from afar
I’m Dyslexic (as people reading these blogs may have already noticed) and one of the things that I really struggled with at school was that I could not see my own mistakes, I would keep making the same ones repeatedly all while my teachers were probably thinking “at some point this boy will figure it out”. It makes me laugh because with my offshore racing project I am so emotionally invested that at times, I cannot see my own mistakes.
In sailing, much like in football (soccer for my American friends), coaches watch from afar, as the further away the easier it is to see what is happening in a more holistic sense. How lots of small inputs affect an outcome , the chain impact of different actions and the changes of what could lead to the biggest improvements.
The eye of coach Etienne Saiz by the incredible Jean-Baptiste D'Enquin
I had my suspicions about the basic causes of some of my missing and inconsistent performance, but it wasn’t until I had a coffee with a certain English Solo Offshore Sailor (He knows who he is, and I am very appreciative for his words of wisdom). It was plainly obvious to him looking from afar and yet somehow, I couldn’t see it. Maybe I had become lost in my own project, with all the different elements involved, I had lost track of a very basic aspect of sporting performance? Had I become so invested in it that I could open my eyes and look around? Or was it case of only knowing what information I already know and until someone points
Now you dear reader might have to wait a little before I let you in on what this area to work is (close friends will have likely worked it out) as I’d rather not put my biggest weakness on the internet for the world to know about it. Hopefully you’ll understand!
A new project
I must confess to a secret here; at the start of June the world saw the very latest Class40 ocean racing yacht, number 206.
For my non-sailing friends, a Class40 is championship of ocean racing yacht in which all boats must conform to the following rules
Length of 40foot or 12.19meters (thus where it gets its name).
Width of 4.5meters
Keel depth of 3meters
The project is a collaboration between English Solo Sailor Jack Trigger and US Solo Sailor Greg Leonard, the boat had been kept a secret for a while. There were no public photos of the boat until launch week, when suddenly construction was announced, completed and the boat was sailing all in the space of 10 days. I had known about the boat for a little while, so it was quite funny to see everyone’s reaction to the apparent 10 day build time.
The commissioning week and testing was a first for me; the first time in my life that I was involved in a brand-new boat, the jobs list was long, seriously long. What no one tells you about have a brand-new boat in front of you is that it’s quite the mental battle between the inner child desperately wanting to take the new boat for a spin, and the inner adult understanding there were lots of jobs to be completed before any meaningful learning can take place. The project is going in the right direction and it’s a very exciting time, within 5 days of the launch we’d already gone offshore with the boat, and after only 3 weeks the boat completed a no dramas lap of Ireland as a shake down sail. The boat is fast like fast to the point of almost being an aero plane, and easy to go fast. You may have seen a video of doing 20knots already while Jack was posing for some photos.
The boat is not exactly a classically beautiful piece of art, she doesn’t have long flowing lines and probably won’t look great in a calendar or as a painting on wall. She’s got a wide bow, wings and lots of angles, however a fast boat is a beautiful boat. It’s a beautiful experience to go as fast as this boat is capable of. So, in many ways she’s like a contemporary work of art, those interactive sculptures that you have to experience to understand are all the rave, she’s a work of art in that it’s something you’ve got to experience to truly understand her beauty. Rumour has it Jack and Greg are talking to a Swiss art dealer based in Geneva to buy the work of art for an estimated $450 million
The new Class40 is not exactly a poster
From a personal aspect I’m very happy to see childhood Topper rival and training buddy Jack back with his own project and I can’t wait to see what he’s capable of! It’s vert cool to be helping the person who in 2018 when doing the Route du Rhum, made it seem realistic that I could one day have my own solo racing project.
Although it should be noted this boat isn’t far from being a giant topper!
Rounded bow: Think I’ve seen that design somewhere before!!
My own project
As most people may have guessed (Dsylexic me wrote “guest” and almost published it) La Solitaire du Figaro is my first love, kind of like teenagers first love you think its going to be this ever-lasting love story but in reality, its filled all kinds of problems.
It’s true that the more I get involved in class40 racing the more I like it and slowly love it, in April this year their was a race called “The Transat CIC”, a single handed sailing race from Lorient in France to New York city and I’ll be honest when I followed it I thought WOW (the same WOOW when I first discovered La Solitaire) one day I have to do this race with my own project! After all I am city boy and the thought of taking a super cool ocean racing boat to the heart of one of the greatest cities in the world pulls on the heart strings.
Name a cooler place to finish a sailing race? Photo by Alexis Courcoux
The next edition of the race is in 2028 so their is time…..
I am not quite ready to leave my beloved Figaro 3 racing and going forward I would like to use my next participation in La Solitaire (There definitely will be!!) to learn (of course) and build on the great base I have in the category, but more than that to build something more ambitious.
I’ve come too far, work too hard and made soo much progress it would be wrong to stop this now!!
In 2021 I came with this idea deep in my head of always being a low budget, relatively provincial Figaro competitor (based on my lack of public profile and general inexperience in offshore sailing I felt that was the limit to what I could achieve), from the past 3 years I started to realize that I am my own worst enemy and that I am holding myself back.