First female winner?

Isabelle Joschke has already won two major Mini events this season - but can she add the Mini Transat to her impressive record?

Over the years the Mini Transat has had no real shortage of female competitors. From the UK Ellen Macarthur cut her solo offshore racing teeth in the event back in 1997 when she finished 17th and was followed two races later after by Sam Davies (11th). The best result by a female competitor was from a young Isabelle Autissier, who finished third in the 1987 race (just behind Laurent Bourgnon) before moving swiftly on to a lengthy career in the Open 60 class. Over 15 previous runnings of this classic biennial offshore race for aspirant singlehanders, it has never been won by a woman. However on Sunday’s start line of the 2007 Transat 6,50 Charente Maritime Bahia (to give the event its proper title), will be the most promising contender to date.

The product of a French mother and a German-Austrian father, Isabelle Joschke is about to set sail on her second Mini Transat, having spent four years campaigning in the class. The prospect of a podium finish, or possibly even winning by the time the boats reach Salvador de Bahia, Brazil after 4,600 miles of racing their 21ft ocean racers (cross an Open 60 with a 49er…) is a decidedly real one for the 30 year old. In all the races she has competed in this year so far Joschke has been on the podium in all of them and won two of the key events - the Pornichet Select and the Mini Pavois.

While her parents don't sail, Joschke was introduced to the sport when she was visiting her granny in Austria and had the opportunity to have a go in an Optimist. While she studied literature at university, the sea has clearly captivated her and for the last nine years her profession has been a mix of delivery skipper and charter boat skipper, something by coincidence she shares with this year's two British entries (more on them in due course).

Joschke admits she had never raced before getting into the Mini class, the inspiration for which was "to do real sailing, because chartering and doing deliveries is not really sailing, it is not an adventure. I want to do something that changes and I had heard about these very fast, very funny boats where you do everything, you manage all the project by yourself - so I was interested in this thing.

"I didn’t really know about Minis when I bought my boat. I thought it would be something nice for me that I wanted to try. So I bought my first boat which was an Andrew Cape design from 1999 and then I just started the project. I looked at the boat, checked it in the winter and began to sail it and discovered it was a really funny little boat and that the races are really nice, the people are pretty nice in this class and it came to be a real passion. So I thought I’d go further."

The former Aberdeen Asset Management boat, Joschke first acquired was the eminent navigator's steed which was subsequently raced by Sam Davies in 2001. This she campaigned for three years including a 14th place in the 2005 Mini Transat (not bad, considering the age of her boat). "On the first leg I had a problem with my generation which didn’t work and so I had no batteries and in the second leg I finished fifth." She followed this up with a very impressive fourth place in the Mini class' race to the Azores and back last year.

Following the Mini Transat in 2005, Joschke decided that she had enjoyed the experience and wanted another go in a more competitive boat. From being a part time Mini sailor, slotting other work on boats in between races, she chose to go full time and over the course of 2006 convinced her sponsors Degremont, a water treatment specialist and Synergie, an employment agency, to fund a campaign in a new boat. "They came back for the Azores Race and then finally they came back for this new project, but it is not easy to keep a sponsor. I am really happy to have them," says Joschke.

The new project involved the building of a Finot-Conq designed Mini at Thierry Fagnent's ACMO yard near La Trinite-sur-Mer close to where she now lives. When it comes to building in carbon fibre, particularly for the Mini class, Fagnent is widely viewed as the Stradivarius. Joschke's new Degremont-Synergie is a sistership to that of the new Ecover for Belgium sailor Peter Laureyssens and was the third boat out of these moulds.



While the hull is the same as the new Ecover, above the deck is differs in having a wingmast that, like an ORMA 60s, cants from side to side and fore and aft (although not to the same degree). Her boat is obviously a 21ft long Mini so the operation of this is considerably lower tech, involving no hydraulics and also it is the fore and aft rake component than the lateral cant that appears to be the more important (see the video later...) The rig articulation was a late change to the rig, only set up by Joschke in July. In this year's Mini fleet a few other boats such as Adrian Hardy's Brossard also have this feature.

As we have noted, since Degremont-Synergie was popped in the grog earlier this year Joschke has notched up some formidable results. "I was happy because I was thinking that with a new boat you always have problems - so on the first races you don’t have any results because you always are solving problems," she admits. "But I didn’t have any which was the most amazing thing. So I was not thinking about getting podiums in every race in one season, I was hoping to win one race..."

So what's her secret? "I cannot say there is a secret. The first thing is not to break, but to be able to win you have to have your boat always going first, and to be always working on it." We understand that Joschke is fastidious, for a solo sailor, in perpetually keeping her boat at optimum trim and also has a useful nack for always going the right way. "And you also need a bit of luck. On solo sailing you have to be good at everything but mostly you have to be able to rest regularly and not to be too serious at one point, to be able to sail fast when there are no boats next to you showing you have fast you can go. You have to be able to be alone for a long long time and this is very important."

Like Ellen MacArthur, Joschke is also good on the technical side, thanks to her background working on boats for a living. As the new Degremont-Synergietook shape at AMCO, she was involved in every part of it.

Sleep management is also essential and something she has learned. "The first year was very difficult for me - then I went to sleep when I was sailing all the time. The second year was better. Now it is easy for me to go to sleep for five minutes. It is very important to be able rest for a very short time and when you know you are tired you go to sleep.

"I think on the Transat you have to sleep four hours every day but that is on average, sometimes it is more sometimes less. You can less more when you are away from land and if you are under spinnaker and there is breeze you can’t really sleep but if it is not so breezy the next day you can."

Compared to her old boat, the new one has a much stiffer hull shape, Joschke says, and also carries substantially more sail area. While her previous boat had a canting keel, the new one has this too but also carries water ballast and the rig - despite being a wingmast - is also lighter. The result is a boat that is very light and very very fast downwind. "Upwind we don’t go fast, almost the same, around 6 knots, maybe sometimes faster. Downwind you do better averages. For me it is not important to do high speeds but high averages. We are probably one knot faster at least. It is totally different," she says.

Six women are competing in this year's Transat 6,50 Charente Maritime Bahia, but Joschke is the only one in the Proto class of one-offs (rather than the production Minis of the Series class). If she wins it will be a phenomenal achievement and one which will certainly launch her career. Her next step, she says, after the Mini will be into the Figaro class and from there into an Open 60 - a text book ascent to the Vendee Globe pinnacle. "That is what I want to do. If I can find a sponsor. But I don’t know if I am going to win the Mini. I am not the only one with a good boat. We must not forget that I am the only women in the Protos but there are men that are very good like Sam Manuard, like Adrian Hardy, Yves le Blevec, etc."



In the following video clips Isabelle shows us around her boat.

In clip one she talks us through the canting rig - click here to view this.

In clip two Isabelle shows us down below - click here to view this .

Plus a short clip - here - from off the boat.