New greyhounds of the sea

THERE ONCE WAS A TIME when people regarded the large ocean liners as the greyhounds of the sea. They averaged about 20 knots, those greyhounds. About 480 nautical miles in a day. Who would have thought, in those days, that one man, alone in a sailboat, could cover 545 miles in 24 hours — an average speed of 22.7 knots? That’s precisely what Francois Gabart did in the last Vendée Globe race.

Gabart was sailing a 60-foot monohull called Macif.

I have long since stopped boggling at the accomplishments of long-distance sailboat racers. There seems to be no shortage of brave men and women willing to risk their lives in high-tech sailboats with hulls shaped like flat irons, and every four years they set sail from Sables d’Olonne in France in boats with canting keels and moveable ballast tanks, sizzling off the top of swells at speeds up to (and sometimes exceeding) 30 knots as they make perilous passages through the chilly wilderness of the Southern Ocean.

The next Vendée Globe is about 18 months away, and already the prospective contestants are signing up, launching new boats, and refurbishing some that have done the race more than once before.

Here, for the record, is what these contestants will have to do to win. Here are the statistics for Francois Gabart and Macif in the 2012/2013 running of the race:

Ø Longest distance covered in 24 hours: 10 December, 545 miles at an average speed of 22.7 knots
Ø Time spent leading the race: 44 days 20 hours
Ø Les Sables d’Olonne to Equator: 11 days 00 hours 20 min (Jean Le Cam’s 2004/2005 record: 10 days 11 hours 28 min)
Ø Equator to Good Hope: 12 days 03 hours 25 min (J P Dick’s record: 12 day 02 hours 40min)
Ø Good Hope to Cape Leeuwin: 11 days 06 hours 40 min (new record)
Ø Cape Leeuwin to Cape Horn: 17 days 18 hours 35min (new record)
Ø Cape Horn to Equator: 13 days 19 hours
Ø Equator to Les Sables d’Olonne: 12 days 01 hour 37 minutes.

In other words, around the world in about 78 days. It’s an extraordinary achievement, particularly to those of us who are content to plod alongat 5 knots. But Gabart and his fellow professional competitors  are extraordinary sailors. They are the Supermen and Superwomen of the sport — but backed by big money, of course. They are a breed apart from us amateurs who literally do mess around in boats. But I have to say I don’t envy them. There are easier ways to earn a living and probably more fulfilling ways of enjoying the gentle art of sailing.

Today’s Thought

Sooner or later . . . you are going to be looking at God saying, “We’re going to be lucky if we get out of here.” Your life is going to be in front of you and then you are going to realize that you’d rather be grocery shopping.

— Ed Barry, rock climber, Newsweek, 1 Oct 84

Tailpiece

They tell me that Viagra is now available in tea bags. It doesn't enhance your sexual performance but it does stop your cookie going soft.

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Home from the virtual sea

Francois Gabart and Macif, the winner of the REAL Vendée Globe race around the world.

 

HOME AT LAST. I’ve just finished sailing around the world in the Virtual Vendée Globe race. I crossed the finish line in France 79 days, 20 hours, and 31 minutes after the start.  I don’t suppose Jules Verne would be interested, wherever he might be now, but I did just manage to go around the world in less than 80 days.

I wasn’t among the winners, though. I was number 11,176 over the line, though in mitigation I should explain that there were 472,737 boats racing, mostly skippered by mad-keen Frenchmen. You could say I came in the equivalent of 11th out of 473, and that certainly sounds a lot better — but I should have done better.

The Virtual Vendée, which takes place at the same time as the real Vendée Globe singlehanded, non-stop race around the world, is far more competitive than I had imagined.  Four years ago, the last time the Virtual Vendée was held, I loafed along and left my boat to her own devices for weeks at a time.  I came in 91,801st.  This time I determined to beat that result, but I still didn’t reckon with the ferocious French.

I soon learned that you could lose thousands of places overnight if you didn’t stay awake and change course for every wind switch.  I think tens of thousands of Frenchmen must have lost of a lot of shuteye in the past two-and-a-half months.

This computer game, as I’ve said before, is a sort of cross between geometry and snakes and ladders, and after I’d got the hang of it, or most of it, I was doing reasonably well.  I worked my way up through the pack week by week until, five days before the finish line, I was placed 2,815.

Then I made the colossal strategic blunder of  heading the short way (east) instead of the long way (west) around that great area of doldrums known as the Azores High. I lost 8,400 places in five days. Even when I was on the last lap, the fates were against me.  Heading east in the Bay of Biscay I was doing 23.4 knots and still losing places because others, more cunning than I, had found even stronger winds to blow them to the finish.

I have said before that anyone who places less than 10,000 in the Virtual Vendée must be an expert. I can’t count myself in that distinguished company, unfortunately, but I must say I enjoyed myself immensely, apart from the last five days.

Meanwhile, out there on the real oceans, the real Vendée Globe racers in their 60-foot planing dinghies were having their own problems with collisions,  masts falling down, and keels falling off.  But the winner, Francois Gabart, in Macif, averaged more than 15 knots all the way around the world, and in one 24-hour session he averaged more than 20 knots.

Nobody in the heydays of the clipper ships could have imagined a singlehander putting up a performance like that. To tell the truth, I still find it hard to imagine it myself. The Vendée Globe skippers are truly the wondermen and wonderwomen of the sailing world.

Today’s Thought

There be triple ways to take, of the eagle or the snake,
Or the way of a man with a maid;
But the sweetest way to me is a ship’s upon the sea,
In the heel of the North-East Trade.
— Rudyard Kipling, The Long Trail

Tailpiece

Can anyone explain why we leave cars worth thousands of dollars in the driveway and put all our useless junk in the garage?

(Drop by every Monday, Wednesday, Friday for a new Mainly about Boats column.)

Ethics of singlehanded ocean racing

LESS THAN A MONTH into the race, at least seven of the 20 Vendée Globe round-the-world singlehanded racers have fallen by the wayside.  So far there has been no loss of life, but I can’t help wondering how long this class of boat will last, considering the lack of seaworthiness.  Among the casualties suffered by these multi-million-dollar racers were a dismasting and one case where the keel simply fell off.  And there were two of these Open 60 class sailboats that collided with fishing boats while their skippers were sleeping, one in the cockpit and one down below.

Technically, the whole race is in contravention of the International Rules for the Prevention of Collisions at Sea, which require every vessel to keep a proper lookout. That’s something a singlehander can’t do, for he or she has to sleep some time or other. So I would imagine that an Admiralty Court would award substantial damages to any boat engaged in fishing that was struck at 20 knots by a sailboat.  I hope the sponsors of those racing boats have deep pockets.

Sleep is definitely a problem for the Vendée Globe sailors, especially in the early days of the race, where shipping lanes are congested.  Several boats were penalized for transgressing the international rules regarding one-way traffic systems and causing hazards to other shipping, but I would imagine they were there because sleep deprivation had affected their ability to make rational decisions.

With practice, I’m told, you can get sufficient sleep in short stretches. Many singlehanders sleep for 20 minutes at a time, keep watch for 20 minutes, then sleep another 20 minutes, and so on.  On a normal cruising yacht, 20 minutes is taken to be roughly amount of time for a vessel appearing on the horizon to reach you, but, of course, if you’re doing 20 knots or more yourself, as the Vendée boats often do, the collision time is greatly shortened.

To state it briefly, lack of sleep on a singlehanded sailboat is dangerous. Recklessly dangerous, possibly, because without sleep you lose efficiency.  Your temper becomes frayed and decisions are difficult.  All this makes you a danger to others at sea and those who might be sent to rescue you if the worst happens.

I think there ought to be a lot more discussion about the ethics of singlehanding, particularly singlehanded racing.  Much as I admire the guts and determination of the Vendée Globe racers, there is something else that needs to be discussed:  in the old days, if a singlehander caused a collision, his or her own small, slow-moving  craft was likely to come off the worse. So breaking the Rule of the Road was largely condoned. The rule was rarely, if ever, enforced.  But nowadays, we have flat-iron-shaped 60-footers moving at lethal speeds under autopilot only and capable of wreaking all kinds of havoc and damage.  We need to think about whether this makes sense.

Today’s Thought

No one when asleep is good for anything.
— Plato.

Tailpiece

Two sweet young things were returning home late after a party when they discovered they’d lost the key to their apartment. They found a ladder, though, and put it alongside an upstairs window that had been left open.

One of them started climbing up the ladder and chirruped: “You know, I suddenly feel like a fireman.”

“Oh for goodness’ sake!” hissed her friend. “Where are we going to find you a fireman at this time of night?”

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A race of superlatives

Swiss skipper Bernard Stamm fights
70-knot winds in a previous Vendée Globe

IT’S HARD FOR US to imagine what a big deal the yacht race known as the Vendée Globe is for the people of France. Someone recently described this non-stop, single-handed round-the-world race as rather ‘parochial,’ and in a way that’s true because the great majority of the 20 entrants for this year’s race are French, and there seems to be very little interest in other countries such as the United States, which is not represented at all.

Neverthless, the Globe, which starts tomorrow (Saturday, November 10, 2012) is a unique race, a race of superlatives. It’s by far the toughest test of human endurance at sea, and of human ingenuity in designing and building 60-foot sailboats capable of withstanding the extraordinary stresses of crashing through the world’s stormiest seas at speeds in excess of 20 knots for months on end.

Not all the solo starters will finish the race, that is almost a certainty. Boats have limped into port under jury rig, and lives have been lost, before. Gallant rescues have been made to save the lives of fellow competitors out of reach of normal rescue services.

This race should touch the hearts of all who sail, no matter where they live in the world, but it also strongly affects millions of French people who are not sailors themselves, but who recognize the drama in this supreme test of man against nature. More than a quarter million of them are cramming themselves into the little western seaside town of Les Sables-d’Olonne in the department of Vendée every day to see the boats and catch a glance at the brave souls who will sail them on this two-month lone odyssey, among them Britain’s female entrant, Samantha Davies, mother of a young child.

As Bruno Retailleau, president of the General Council of Vendée, put it:

“The Vendée Globe has taken on a more popular dimension in the village. What has impressed me is the capacity and passion of the public. There has not been so much of a queue as a procession. People wait patiently, talking quietly, look at the boats and share the dream. You sense a certain harmony, forming a communion between the event and the public. There is something which develops between the public and the skippers. People want to see them because they are heroes. The concept of the race is so simple that everyone can understand it, you don’t have to be any kind of sailor. I think mostly it is a beautiful, simple story, a legend. It is more than a competition, a race. This is the story of a confrontation between man and nature. Man in a world in which he is fragile faces nature which is big and dangerous. But whether you are French, Brazilian or Japanese you can live this race. And the race is gaining an even more international dimension.”

Like the U.S. presidential election, the Vendée Globe takes place only once every four years, and no one who is not French has ever won it. Maybe this year it will be different. In any case, I tip my hat to the brave souls taking part, and wish each and every one of them safe voyaging on their remarkable journeys around the world.

http://www.vendeeglobe.org/en/

 Today’s Thought

No game was ever yet worth a rap
For a rational man to play,
Into which no accident, no mishap,
Could possibly find its way.
-- A. L. Gordon, Ye Weary Wayfarer.

Tailpiece

“Did you hear the news? Flossie just sold her second novel.”
“Great! What did she use for the plot?”
“The film version of her first novel.”

(Drop by every Monday, Wednesday, Friday for a new Mainly about Boats column.)

Post-race reflections

MY RACE IS OVER, and my imaginary 60-foot Open Class boat is sitting at the finish line on the equator. I don’t know what happens to it now, but I expect the organizers of the practice for the Virtual Vendée Globe will take care of it and make it disappear into cyberspace.

I joined the race from the Bay of Biscay to the equator (days late over the line) in 14,399th place and finished yesterday at 8,303th as the French computer put it. So I overtook 6,096 boats, something I’ve never managed to do in real life. There were 35,490 skippers competing in this 15-day race, nearly all French, but including the 20 competitors in the real Vendée Globe singlehanded, non-stop, round-the-world race, which starts next month.

It was an interesting ride, and for last few days I had a private match race with one of the few other boats flying Old Glory, one called Santosha.  I don’t know whether he was aware of my presence or not, but his resumé revealed that he was very experienced in this kind of racing so I assumed he was a worthy competitor. And so it turned out.  He was also a sneaky competitor because he changed course in the middle of the night. 

That’s what you do if you’re really serious about virtual sailboat racing, and in fact that’s what I did for weeks in the last Virtual Vendée Globe four years ago, until I came to my senses and abandoned my boat and let her find her own way across the Southern Ocean on a fixed course. I paid for it, of course.  I finished in position 91,801, which is something else I never dreamed I’d do in a yacht race. 

Anyway, I didn’t get up in the night this time.  I now perceive a greater need for beauty sleep, so I just left my boat to her own devices at night.  In any case, I managed to fend off Santosha very simply by staying five miles ahead of him and maintaining the same course and speed as him. He actually finished 3.4 miles behind me in position 8,566, or 263 places behind, which gives you an idea of how densely packed the racers are.

The highlight of the race for me was a day’s run in a windy streak I discovered near the African coast when I overtook 5,000 boats in 12 hours. It was a suicide run, of course, because it landed me in the doldrums where I sat glumly the next day while 4,000 boats scooted past to the west with cocky French grins on their dials.

But I consoled myself with the thought that this business of staring at a computer screen is not really sailing.  Someone called it a game of chess on water, but that’s doing a disservice to chess. This is much slower and much simpler. This is mankind versus a computer programmed by other mankind.  You don’t need to know anything about sailing to compete in this game.

You don’t even need to know how to spell, either. The official chart names the North Antlantic, the South Antlantic, the Caranies islands and Capo Verde.  And nobody told the computer that ordinal numbers in English end in st, such as 1st, or nd (2nd) or rd (3rd), so all the results ended in th, as in my own — 8,303th.

But I shouldn’t be critical. I don’t even know the French for North Atlantic. Not that it matters. The only language you need speak to take part in these races is computer.

Today’s Thought

The wind rules the aspects of the sky and the action of the sea.
— Joseph Conrad

Tailpiece

"How's that book on anti-gravity?"
"It's great. I can hardly put it down."

(Drop by every Monday, Wednesday, Friday for a new Mainly about Boats column.)

Grounded in cyberspace

I RAN AGROUND yesterday on the African coast at the southern end of Western Sahara.  Despite the inhospitable desert surroundings, it wasn’t the worst grounding I’ve ever experienced because I could get free at the click of a button.  Or so I thought.

Actually, it took two clicks of the button but I didn’t find that out for about an hour, by which time I’d lost 1,000 places in the Virtual Vendée Globe practice race, from France down to the equator.

I joined the race late, as usual, and  the French computer inserted me into the field at place number 14,399. Two days later, when the field of skippers had swollen to more than 27,000, I had wormed my way through the mob into position 9,000-and-something. But yesterday I was back to 10,000-and-plenty.

I had found a narrow channel of stronger winds alongside the West African coast and was busily jibing down the windy lane while my competitors, overwhelmingly French, were sleeping back at home and their boats plowed along on fixed courses under autopilot.

But I cut things too fine and grounded for exactly 68 seconds before jibing out to sea again. I set the new course, making 16 knots in a breeze of 17.8 knots, and then I went for an hour’s walk in the woods.

When I got back to my computer it was telling me that I’d now been aground for an hour and 68 seconds.  I should have checked before I went out, because while I was walking, about 1,000 French boats came trundling past me.

This is a computer game in which small errors add up to enormous changes in position — and the rivalry is intense. Each of the 20 entrants for the real Vendée Globe singlehanded round-the-world race, which starts next month, was given a boat in this virtual game, and I found myself among a couple of them before my grounding.  But I learned to my surprise that when Vincent Riou, sailing PRB, was about 6 miles to starboard on a parallel course of 211 degrees, in the same wind of 17.8 knots, he was doing 12.6 knots while I was doing 12.1 knots. At first I thought the French computer was being kind to the stars of the real Vendée Globe, giving them a half-knot advantage to prevent loss of face, but I later discovered that you can buy speed in this game.  If you’re prepared to flash your credit card, you can buy a special suit of sails not available to freeloaders like me.  There are other paid advantages, too, such as autopilots and automatic sail changes to suit wind conditions.

None of this matters, I guess, if you and a bunch of friends agree to be freeloaders with no paid privileges, and simply race against each other, but the commercial aspect has rather put me off entering for the full-length Virtual Vendée, a game that lasts about two months.

No matter.  I’ll stick it out to the finish of this practice race, which ends at the equator, about two weeks away.  Last time I looked, the leading boat, Ricard 34, was 454 miles ahead of me, and the Vendée Globe experts were trailing along behind him.  The first of the "experts" was Safran Sailing Team, coming 139th, and Samantha Davies, one of three British round-the-worlders, was third among the experts and 621th (as the French computer puts it) overall.

If you haven’t tried racing under sail on a computer against 30,000 opponents, you might like to take a look at the official race site.  There’s no charge to play simply, and you might get hooked.

 http://www.virtualregatta.com/

Today’s Thought

The only competition worthy a wise man is with himself.
— Mrs. Anna Jameson, Memoirs and Essays: Washington Allston

Tailpiece

“What would you be after having there in that bag, O’Flaherty?”
“Chickens.”
“How many?”
“I’m not saying.”
“Well then I’ll guess how many — and you can give me a prize if I’m right.”
“I don’t have a prize. But I tell you what — if you get it right you can have both of them.”

(Drop by every Monday, Wednesday, Friday for a new Mainly about Boats column.)

Why don't they want to stop?

WHEN ELLEN MACARTHUR was approaching the finish line, coming second in a singlehanded non-stop race around the world, her mind was in a whirl.  She wasn’t sure she wanted to finish. 

After living for three months in accommodation that authorities would universally condemn as unfit for human habitation, the petite British sailor was not looking forward to the comforts of civilization. “Part of me quite definitely wanted to stay out there forever,” she recalled later in her book, Taking on the World.

When I read that book recently I was astonished at that remark. She was coming home to the acclamation of 250,000 well-wishers gathered in the French port of Les Sables d’Olonne.  She got a congratulatory call from British Prime minister Tony Blair, and later she was made a Dame of the British Empire. The five-foot-two skipper was in fact the darling of all Europe for her gutsy performance against the cream of the world’s singlehanders, giants of the racing world who dared to sail their 60-foot sloops through the hellish Southern Ocean at speed of 25 knots and more.

Now, three months of mental stress and physical fatigue was nearly over.  Soon she would be able to sleep for more than 20 minutes at a time.  Soon she would be able to eat a decent meal, cooked by someone else.  Soon she would be able to bask in the glory accorded to heroes.

She had gone through hell. And yet she wanted more of it? She wanted to stay out there forever, worrying her little guts out?

It didn’t make sense until I thought of Bernard Moitessier.  He felt the same way during the first singlehanded round-the-world race when he was leading.  Unable to face what he knew would be a riotous welcome at the finish, he declined to turn left after Cape Horn, abandoned the race, and kept on going around the world until he came to Tahiti. He did it, he said, for the sake of his soul.

Well, Ellen MacArthur did actually finish the 2001 Vendée Globe race, despite her reservations. But on her way to the first press conference,  she asked if she could go to the toilet. “I remember sitting down, putting my head on my knees, and taking several deep breaths,” she said. “I sighed with relief at the momentary quiet I had found, and I smiled at the alarming comfort; it was the first time I’d sat on a toilet seat for three months.”

But the question is: What is it that makes these sailors want to keep on sailing?  Why do they wish to keep on suffering?  Is it masochism, or is simply that the devil you know is better than the  angel you don’t?

There is something in human nature that makes us inured to tough circumstances,  given enough time. There is evidence enough of that in the number of woman maltreated by their menfolk who stay on for more. And they say that prisoners sometimes don’t want to be freed when their sentences are up.    

But sailors?  People who, on the whole, have more than the usual amount of common sense?  Why would they wish to continue the self-imposed misery and deprivation of their floating prisons?    

Ironically, perhaps, Dame Ellen gave up competitive sailboat racing in 2010.  I don’t think she has made the reason particularly clear, but I suspect the money she made from sponsorships may have had something to do with it.  It’s quite a different world when you can afford your own toilet seat.

Today’s Thought

With nerve and bone she weaves and multiplies
Exceeding pleasure out of extreme pain.
— Swinburne, Laus Veneris

Tailpiece

“Did you finally tell Jimmy where babies come from?”
 “Well, I tried to explain about the birds and the bees but he kept changing the subject back to girls.”

(Drop by every Monday, Wednesday, Friday for a new Mainly about Boats column.)

 

The real and virtual Vendées

HAVING NOTICED that the latest Vendée Globe is starting in November, I was vaguely thinking of entering  the virtual game that runs at the same time.  This free Internet game lasts about 100 days as it mimics the real singlehanded, non-stop, around-the-world sailing race, but it has certain disadvantages for those of us living far west of the French headquarters on the Bay of Biscay.  Wind and weather conditions are updated every 24 hours at a time convenient to players in France.  That translates to the early hours of the morning on the West Coast of America.

Nevertheless, such is the fascination of steering your own boat in competition with 300,000 other virtual players that during the last race four years ago I did in fact stumble out of bed in the middle of the night and stab at the computer keys to put my boat on a new course with a new suit of sails. 

I must admit that I put her on autopilot under reduced sail for several weeks and let her jog across the South Pacific on her own, mainly because I had no chance of catching up with the leading 100,000 or so players, since I started three weeks late.  But I took over the controls again to round Cape Horn, which was surprisingly thrilling even when viewed on the screen of a computer, and guide her up to the finish in France.

This time around, the organizers of the 2012/2013 virtual Vendée are expecting half a million entrants, so the competition is going to be mighty stiff.  If you’d like to join in the fun, Google “Virtual Vendée Globe” toward the end of October.

As far as I know, there are no American entrants in the real Vendée Globe, the toughest of all singlehanded sailboat races, which forbids all outside assistance. Most of the 20 entrants are French, with a scattering of other Europeans. There is a trio of Brits, including Samantha Davies, who is expected to do well.

The boats themselves are simply giant 60-foot surfboards, very fast, very wide, and very unseaworthy.  In past races, several boats overturned by large seas in the Southern Ocean have remained upside down indefinitely because of their extreme beam.

I notice that Americans didn’t feature among the medal winners in the recent Olympic sailing regatta, either. This seems to be a bad time for American competitive sailing. I wonder what’s happening.

http://www.virtualregatta.com/

http://www.vendeeglobe.org/en/news/around-the-world/10908/about-twenty-yachts-at-the-start.html

Today’s Thought

Thou shalt not covet: but tradition

Approves all forms of competition.
— Arthur Hugh Clough, The Latest Decalogue

Tailpiece
“Waiter, there’s a fly in my soup.”
(26) “If you throw him a small pea, sir, he’ll show you how he plays water polo.”

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