Fourth home

Phil Sharp reports on the first leg of Mini class' Transgascoigne from Port Bourgenay to Gijon

Despite being way down the waiting list for this year's famous Transgascogne race, enough people dropped out to enable me to compete officially in the single-handed prototype class of this 580 mile race to Spain and back. This is the final racing in the Atlantic Open 6.50 qualifying circuit prior to the Mini Transat, so all the favourites for the Mini Transat were in strong competition for a real confidence-booster before the Transat itself.

Held biennially, the Transgascogne is split into two legs, starting and finishing in Port Bourgenay with a stop-over in Gijon, Spain, returning this weekend. The first leg is the longer of the two, competitors required to round Belle Ile before heading south across the Bay of Biscay.

I got a reasonable start to the race and rounded the windward buoy off Bourgenay in about fourth place. I then for some reason just could not get the boat going well, and depressingly got overtaken left, right and centre over the next few miles. I finally took a look over the side of the boat and found I had a massive clump of weed around the centreboard! I fortunately managed to get rid of most of it, and as soon as I removed it I quickly regained the places and moved back towards the front of the fleet.

As we approached our first mark rounding off Isle d’Yeu, I had edged slowly past Servomap and had the top three in my sites again. After rounded the mark about 10 minutes behind the leader, I then heard a lot of gabbling in French on the VHF. This is quite normal except for the fact that my sailnumber was involved and a couple of miles later I interpreted that I had not rounded the mark properly because I had not gone inside the gate, for which one has to pass in the small gap between the committee boat and the mark. So there was only one thing for it - go all the way back and lose lots of positions! It was most frustrating but it made me all the more determined to get up near the front again.

A couple of hours I had overtaken Servomap for a second time and was back up to about 5th as we close-reached in about 20 knots of wind up to Belle Ile. We rounded the bottom of Belle Ile at dawn and then it got windier and lumpier the further up the coast we went. Rounding the top of Belle Ile was not at all pleasant, blowing about 30 knots and with really short steep waves. One wave crashed over the boat and threw me across the cockpit, so I made sure I clipped-on after that!

Despite the carnage I was quite happy to pass Tanguy de LaMotte, one of the earlier leaders who was having some daggerboard problems and unfortanately ended up retiring. After rounding Belle Ile I decided to stay high near the rhumb line whereas Servomap bore off and went for speed. I realised I had maybe made the wrong tactic when I couple of hours later he had almost disappeared over the horizon to leeward along with the leaders!

For the next day I was pretty much on my own but raced my guts out to try and catch the leaders who were now at least a couple of hours ahead. This was quite difficult since meanwhile I was having some big electronics issues. My GPS, log and VHF decided to pack up respectively, so I resorted to my handheld GPS which seemed to chew through a set of batteries every five minutes. I therefore had it switched off most of the time and so had no speed reference, a big problem when you are racing and are constantly making changes to optimise the boats performance. Instead I had to guesstimate the speed by looking at the wake at the back of the boat!

By the end of day two I saw a Mini on the horizon which I found out later to be Isabelle Joschke on Parole, the boat previously sailed by Sam Davies in 2001. She has been very quick recently in the other races and was doing a great job in this race. By midnight I had caught up nearly parallel to her but then started hallucinating badly - I started seeing my friends on board - so had to put the autopilot on and go to sleep for half and hour. When I woke up and turned my GPS on I was really surprised to find I only had 10 miles to go to the finish, expecting it to be about 50! I was running out of time to pass Isabelle, who had extended the gap slightly during my snooze, and despite a lot of hard work I couldn’t close the gap in time.

As I approached the massive array of city lights of a sleeping Gijon, the last batteries in my GPS ran out but fortunately I had picked up the lights for the finish just before! I crossed the finishing line 10 minutes behind Isabelle in fourth place out of 75 starters, completing the 350 mile course in just 2.5 days, very quick for a 21ft boat going upwind nearly the whole way. I was expecting myself to be fifth and was surprised and very pleased to find I had overtaken Didier Vourch on Servomap, one of the big favourites for the Mini Transat, who had been absolutely miles ahead of me at one point.

Corentin Douget on E.Leclerc-Bouygues Telecom won the leg, finishing 2.5 hours ahead of me, quite impressive considering he didn’t have Sam Manuard on board on this occasion! However everyone is beatable and I know where I lost a lot of this time to him and learnt an incredible about in the race, namely making sure you have an electronics package that actually works. I look forward to the return leg on Saturday, a 230 mile sprint directly back to Bourgenay after stocking up in sleep during the next couple of days, while also trying to soak up a bit of nocturnal Spanish life!

Results - leg one

Pos	Sail no	Boat			Arrival time
		Solo proto
1	433	E. Leclerc - Bouygues Telecom	Corentin	Douguet	03:15:26
2	265	Vecteur Plus	Aloys	Claquin	04:55:03
3	276	Synergie travail temporaire	Isabelle	Joschke	05:29:49
4	419	Le Gallais	Phil	Sharp	05:42:05
5	151	servomap	Didier	Le Vourch	07:08:53
6	491	GL Composites	Mikaël	Mergui	09:32:56
7	260	Région Nord Pas de Calais	Cyril	Ducrot	09:44:16
8	284	Ville de Nice	Yann	Delplace	10:49:08
9	312	Night Fever	Matthieu	Cassanas	11:11:27
10	176	Satech	Adam	Currier	11:56:27
11	432	IUT de Nîmes	Nicolas	Marchand	12:32:50
12	198	Brossard	Adrien	Hardy	12:46:15
13	392	khiplus	Ludovic	Mariotti	13:27:03
14	139	Roxy	Alexia	Barrier	15:43:25
15	202	solochallenges.com	Andrew	Wood	17:07:15
16	113	Engineering mesures	Nicolas	Marschal	Démâtage
17	348	Bretagne Lapins	David	Sineau	Abandon
18	417	Crédit Agricole	Stanislas	Maslard	Abandon
19	424	SET Environnement	Tanguy	de Lamotte	Abandon
20	453	Gin Tonic	François	Van Damme	DNC
		Proto double
1	391	Appart City	Yvan	Noblet	08:42:30
2	454	AREAS Assurances	David	Lancry	08:59:47
3	393	The Tom Crean	Cian	Mc Carthy	10:14:53
4	347	Caméléon	Yann	Riou	11:13:00
5	339	ADOC - Solutions	Pierick	Laine	13:45:39
6	520	Telekurs Twing	Jacques	Valente	17:16:55
7	554	www.dijs.net 2	Alfred	Dijs	17:23:32
8	441	SALZGITTER	Christophe	Bérard	19:42:27
9	498	Le Treport - Tirard et Burgaud	David	Le Carrou	23:06:49
10	12	Imagine	Yann	Chevallier	23:53:21
11	75	Bellot Mullenbach & associés	Patrice	Fisseux	Abandon
12	517	Dingo Chantier Marée Haute	Véronique	Châteignier	Abandon
		Series solo
15	511	Bingo	Romain	Vidal	10:59:00
16	438	Basecamp	Peter	Laureyssens	10:59:45
17	483	Cultisol - Marins sans frontières	Sébastien	Mesure	11:39:05
18	480	Cap monde	Olivier	Avram	12:22:05
19	487	LPO - Ligue …	Mathieu	Sannié	12:37:33
20	516	Une place pour chacun	Sylvain	Pontu	12:53:21
1	466	Lady Paulette	David	de Saqui de Sannes	15:29:13
2	219	Mariole	Quentin	Monegier	18:23:13
3	340	Taquet Max	Eric	Bourrié	22:02:06
4	368	PCO TECHNOLOGIES	Ronan	Deshayes	22:35:28
5	507	Knauf - Vendée	David	Lefebvre	22:51:48
6	475	Mondial Assistance	Philippe	Bouillard	23:48:16
7	481	DCF	Marine	Chombart de Lauwe	23:52:54
8	287	Felibre, graine d'épeautre	Manuel	Bergman	23:53:43
9	389	Totem	Arezki	Boudaoud	00:07:48
10	318	Bleizig	Michel	Goyat	00:11:21
11	212	Zoukati	Jean-Christophe	Lagrange	13:13:10
12	488	Pulco	Bruno	Croisel	Abandon
		Series double
1	543	Nautilus magazine	Pierre-Yves	Lautrou	10:21:28
2	455	Petit Auguste	Antoine	Debled	10:24:27
3	505	Noix de Pogo	Eric	Vautrin	12:53:05
4	328	Popeye	Christophe	Brière	13:45:39
5	472	Masoco Bay	Delphine	Barnaud	13:29:21
6	477	Foxawin	Ronan	Trolez	13:26:49
7	435	Tchuda Popka	Laurence	Château	18:07:27
8	553	Mojo	Alex	Franklin	18:56:16
9	446	Koati	Jean	le Borgne	22:04:18
10	452	Aldente	Benoît	Reynis	22:38:04
11	245	Finist'mer - Ecole navale	Patrick	Bot	22:38:35
12	550	Godevin	Michel	Viu	23:45:40
13	47	Celine-Wright.com	Bernard	Morin	23:58:50
14	328	Popeye	Christophe	Brière	00:06:33
15	295	Pennek	Quentin	Gourdol	13:22:06
16	207	Ananda	Claire	Tournier	Abandon 1ère étape
17	320	Lop Lop	Pierre	Loulier	Abandon
18	373	Yellow Submarine	Gildas	du Cleuziou	Abandon
19	539	Construction Modicom	Stéphane	Le Diraison	Abandon