Elaine Bunting's blog

Latest weblogs from Yachting World's Features Editor

Teenager plans solo voyage

18 September 2008

You may remember young Michael Perham, who made history last year when he became the youngest person to sail solo across the Atlantic. Then 14, he sailed a 28ft trailer, Cheeky Monkey, from Gibraltar to Antigua, shadowed by his dad, Peter, who was single-handing an identical boat.

Since he made that voyage Mike Perham and his father have been working to find a way for him to go one better and become the youngest person to sail non-stop alone round the world. Getting funding was the first obstacle but this summer they got enough money to charter a yacht from website comparison site totallymoney.com

The next and, frankly, the bigger obstacle is time. Mike is now 16 and there is a time limit on wresting the record from David Dicks, the Australian who completed a circumnavigation non-stop in 1996 aged 18 years and 41 days.

Mike turns 17 next March, so to be sure of setting new record he has to leave in November or December this year in time for the next Southern Ocean summer season.

The Perhams got the boat they want to charter for the voyage in early September and sailed it with owner Servane Escoffier from St Malo to the Southampton Boat Show. It's a fixed keel, water-ballasted Open 50, originally Cray Valley, the boat J-P Mouligne raced in the 1998 Around Alone.

This is a powerful Finot design, basically a scaled down IMOCA 60, and the rather daunting fact is that, with around three weeks' of work to be done to prepare the boat, young Mike will have only a month or so get to know the boat and learn to sail her before leaving, as planned, in November.

This is going to be some steep learning curve. Mike hasn't done any serious sailing since arriving in Antigua in Cheeky Monkey, and the tradewinds voyage was his first ocean passage. His father, Peter, says it's "not a complicated boat if you break it all down," and adds: "There's no way to really prepare for a voyage like this other than go and do it."

Mike's planned route would take him south of Australia, New Zealand and round Cape Horn before returning to Portsmouth. His father is very keen not to leave at the same time as the Vendée Globe on 9 November.

"There's a very high rate of attrition in these boats and I don't want that to put him off," he told me, "and I wouldn't want him to have to go and rescue one of them."

Elaine Bunting

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Bottoms up

15 September 2008

Many thanks to Georgina and Clive Bartlett at Saltwater PR for awarding me this trophy at the Southampton Boat Show in recognition of my admittedly tireless work. As you can see I have placed the wistful Saltwater Seagull on my desk where he can look out past the Tate Modern, St Paul's Cathedral, etc, and dream of finer things.

As the recipient of the first ever 'Bottoms and Fetishes Award' I'm thrilled to get such encouragement, as there is much work still to be done in this very wide field.

Lovely as the trophy is, I can commend another idea for future winners. A couple of years ago a friend whose family agreed to make Christmas presents for each other rather than buying them received a beautiful scalloped bowl from her 18-year-old nephew.

She exclaimed how lovely it was and asked what it was for. "You could use it for nuts," he suggested. "Because it's a plaster cast of my bottom."

So mull it over, George (or Clive): a little idea for next year?

Elaine Bunting

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Southampton: an uneasy mood?

15 September 2008

You may have noticed that the Southampton Boat Show is the Dorian Gray of the yachting calendar. Everything else changes while it remains disconcertingly yet comfortingly the same.

It's comforting because, for one week, you feel as if time has stood still. Yet it's disconcerting because the show may seem ageless but its occupants are not, and now you come to think about it, this is your 5th/10th/20th/30th year (delete as appropriate).

The Guinness may be the same, the Squaliday Inn is the same, the people are the same, Lee Sanitation, Jimmy Green Marine and Brunton Propellers are in their rightful places. Puddles appear in their predictable locations. On the face of it, the only really new thing this year was the mud last week -- deluxe, extra BOGOF mucky puddles.

Under the surface, however, the predominant mood is one of unease. This time it really is different, and the fear is that things have changed in ways we don't yet fully appreciate.

This press day, for example, was the first I can remember for many years (no, no clues) when there wasn't a morning press briefing by Barclays Marine Finance. No surprise: profits are way down and the price of croissants and pains au chocolat has risen by 49%.

Taking on more debt is not very fashionable right now, and credit is not so easy to get. Nor does parting with capital seem like such a great idea, and it's no great comfort to wake up today and find that share prices are falling faster than secondhand yacht values.

Naturally, people are wondering which part of the business it is going to affect most. The big growth area of 40-45ft production cruisers? Smaller boats? Are the big luxury yachts really immune? The Southampton Boat Show ought to provide us with some collective clues, but I doubt it will. Brave faces are being put on all round.

Photo courtesy of OnEdition

Elaine Bunting

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New term begins

15 September 2008

Gadzooks, September's nearly over. What happened to the summer? Surely it can't be almost winter again?

Yes, it can. Next week we put November to bed, as we say here, and there's nothing quite like a magazine issue date to make you feel the pell-mell charge of passing time.

A casualty of late summer has been my poor old blog, which has been wilting in an untended corner of the YW website. This sad, unwatered little specimen was abandoned during a feast of holidays and extra projects (Top Yachts magazine - still on sale; another book; plus our Vendée Globe race guide -- with the November issue, don't miss it).

Now that light is appearing at the end of the tunnel it's time to add water and hope that the dear reader (whoever that is) will return. Term's begun again, here we go…

Elaine Bunting

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It's pants at Skandia Cowes Week

7 August 2008

You get given all kinds of crew kit in this job. Usually it's a T-shirt or a baseball cap. Thus you visibly 'walk the brand round'.

Never before, though, have we seen this item of logo-ed apparel: a black 'Love Shack' thong courtesy of Tim Spalding, owner and skipper of a Beneteau 40.7 of the same name. The Love Shack thongs are clearly lucky knickers, since Tim is leading his class.

Here in the Skandia Cowes Week media centre we reckon the medium size is far too big for us anyway, but nothing goes to waste. The Love Shack thong is a perfect laptop protector for those bumpy Solent crossings on the Red Jet, and we are exploring other uses.

Elaine Bunting

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Pindar shows her heels

7 August 2008

If Brian Thompson were the type he'd have whooped for joy when the IMOCA 60 Pindar won the Artemis Challenge exhibition race round the Isle of Wight on Tuesday. But Thompson is not a chest-beating kind of man. In his typically mild-mannered and gentlemanly way he simply beamed with delight, shook his crew's hands and said thanks.

But perhaps the dominant emotion was really one of relief. The new and super-powerful Juan Kouyoumdjian-designed Pindar has been a trials-and-tribulations project that has taken a year of grinding hard work, dedication and lots of cash to shake down.

Yesterday's 50-mile Artemis Challenge race was the first race Pindar has completed since her launch in July 2007. She was dismasted on this same race during Cowes Week last year and lost her rig again before she even reached the start line of the Transat Jacques Vabre. With a new and beefier wingmast and the expediture of a rumoured £1 million since her launch in New Zealand, Pindar is at last potentially a force to be reckoned with in this year's solo Vendée Globe.

We tore off from the start line, Brian Thompson on the helm and Mike 'Moose' Sanderson, the originator of this alleged smoking gun design on the mainsheet. The boat felt rock solid and we were quicker than our rivals upwind. Despite the "sharp bullets" coming off the island shore (as I now know gusts are called in TeamOrigin circles) Pindar stayed firmly on her feet.

We edged in to the lead within the first couple of miles and never relinquished that lead for the rest of the race, despite hard chasing by Seb Josse in BT. Around the back of the island, Pindar was clocking 17-19 knots and bounding over rather lumpy seas in a tumult of white water. The gunshot sound of the mainsheet being eased and the accompanying judder of the hull as it flexed are all signs of a boat that will be fast but undoubtedly unforgiving for Thompson as he sails it solo around the world later this year.

So Pindar, at the extreme end of the IMOCA 60 design, has made first steps towards vindicating the hardcore ideas of Mike Sanderson and Juan Kouyoumdijan, and Brian Thompson has succeeded thus far in making that concept work. Now all eyes are on another 60 superbeast, the Simon Rogers-designed Artemis 2.

With her measurement certificate fresh in the team's hands after a late launch, a slimmed down rig, new rudders and a deal of problems in meeting the class rule, the new Artemis was on her first competitive outing. Finishing 2nd last gave no clue as to what the boat could do, and observers were left wondering if this much-touted (and, in France, controversial) weapon will indeed be able to hit the mark. Or, given Pindar's protracted preparations, if there will be anywhere near enough time before November to do so.

Elaine Bunting

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Pete Goss's daring voyage

6 June 2008

Pete Goss's new boat Spirit of Mystery is to be launched from Millbrook in Cornwall in two weeks' time (early evening of Saturday 21st, if you want to put it in your diary).

I've been down to the yard twice - if yard, as opposed to river bank, is the right word. It's a project created entirely from scratch, because Pete and his team have built everything. They put down hard core on the quayside, pulled out fallen oak trees, set up a makeshift sawmill and even designed and erected a shed to cover the emerging frames of the boat.

Spirit of Mystery is a 37ft lug rigged yawl based on a modified fishing boat that was sailed from Newlyn in Cornwall to Melbourne in 1854 by a crew of friends and relatives in search of better fortunes. The recreation is a much more daring affair that it might at first seem.

First, Pete and his boatbuilder Chris Rees had to do a fair amount of detective work to puzzle out what Mystery would have looked like, as no pictures or references other than basic dimensions existed. Chris made an interpretation on the best information available, added in some safety factors and lofted his design in the village hall.

The thing to my mind that will make the Spirit of Mystery voyage so daring, particularly compared to modern Southern Ocean voyages, is that it will be a foray into the world's worst weather.

It's not that well known that modern sailors, crewed or solo, have both the means and the motive to avoid really bad weather. Their boats are so fast that they do not need true winds over 25 knots and the space age technology at their fingertips usually lets them avoid the worst storms or at least the worst quadrants of them.

Not so Pete Goss and the crew he'll take: his brother, brother-in-law and his 14-year-old son. They will do as the original crew did and head south from Cape Town, pick up the 40th line of latitude and run it down (or is that up?) towards Melbourne, navigating with a sextant.

If they make a 200-mile day they will be positively hurtling. There will be no outrunning the weather. They will have to take winds and seas as they come, an idea that over the space of a little over a decade has become almost archaic. That demands strength from a boat that is fast going out of fashion in racing.

This is a truly fascinating project and, yes, of course I would say this, but to get the full story do pick up our July issue, which comes out next week.

Photo by www.lloyd-images.com> Mark Lloyd

Elaine Bunting

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Tumbleweed in Antigua

6 June 2008

The party's over.

This photo was sent to last week by John Burnie. With Antigua Sailing Week (and the season) at an end, this was the scene at Nelson's Dockyard - empty, apart from his yacht Indaba 'and a couple of cats for company,' he writes. 'Talk about Norman No Mates!'

Elaine Bunting

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Leopard and the 'sail-powered motorboat' record

4 June 2008

So Mike Slade's ICAP Leopard has just claimed the transatlantic record. Well done to him and his crew, but I'm bothered by the small print, which explains that this is the powered record, allowing the use of electric winches, etc. I'm told that Leopard needs to run her generator or engine almost continuously when racing and was aptly described to me last week by David Schmidt of Sail Magazine as "a sail-powered motorboat".

A powered transatlantic record seems a very odd thing to boast about for a couple of reasons. First, the use of power seems out of kilter with sentiments (and technology) these days. Secondly, what's the big deal about a time of 7d 19h by a crew aided by powered gear, when Mari Cha IV's did it over a day quicker with no such assistance and one man under sail alone (Francis Joyon in IDEC) was a day faster than either?

My view on Leopard's record chimed with a comment from reader Laurence Woodward, who'd emailed me about sailors hitting whales and continued: 'I nearly drifted [in the Western Approaches] into a boat powered by the wind that needs a engine to tack. There's a debate. But I guess we are all just a bunch of hypocrites.'

Now this is a very interesting subject, and I think we do have to look very closely in future at the use of power in records and races. Francis Joyon proved during his solo round the world record last year that it is possible to circumnavigate at speed using nothing more than wind power, solar power and a fuel cell.

So it is possible to have greener round the world races. Laurence is certainly right that the yachts themselves are far from green and when I talked to Mark Turner of OC Events last weeks he agreed that sailors had to be "very careful about talking of sailing as a green sport". Like me, he thinks that a solar- or wind-powered round the world race should and will happen but at the moment it's not possible, oddly enough because of the slow speed connecting to the internet.

Present rules for most races prevent outside assistance so sailors must go online for weather information to be competitive. These rules could be changed but sponsors will still want video conferences and video files from on board. The Fleet 77 equipment used for this is still relatively slow and the equipment incredibly power hungry; it can take 20 minutes or more to send back 3 minutes of video.

So for now engines or generators are required to satisfy sponsors' requirements on a non-stop race. That may change as gear and internet connection times via satellites improve. And for sure we should be looking for ways to race in harmony with the elements. Reviving a powered Atlantic record is a worrying step backwards.

But a truly green event? That is a long way off.

Photo above by Rick Tomlinson

Elaine Bunting

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Why Peyron plays Purcell

4 June 2008

A few last stories from the Artemis Transat. First, the whales again. There were more collisions and sightings than it might appear - at least 20 sightings and eight collisions among the two classes.

I had this email from Laurence Woodward on the subject: 'I think all the sailors involved have a moral responsibility to sort something out. Merchant vessels are noisy due to the mode of propulsion and probably don't actually hit that many. For a yacht race to kill and injure so many is unacceptable.'

He adds: 'Both Ellen and the Volvo boys carp on about their green credentials (sad reality is all modern boats are a load of toxic crap never mind the rockets etc for our nav and communications) and with the Volvo Ocean Race off shortly maybe its time to put the house in order. I can only suggest modifying the net pingers some of the pair trawlers use to stop catching dolphins in the Western Approaches.'

Interestingly, when I interviewed Loick Peyron after the Transat he agreed that some form of deterrent ought to be part of the investment for these races - for all concerned. He suggested that if it were possible to safely create some kind of resonance from appendages that might do the trick.

"I did not have many collisions compared with others when I sailed the trimarans," he told me, "because I had boats with quite noisy daggerboards and they buzzed so maybe [the whales] could hear it." He also told me he plays music a lot "Handel, Vivaldi - and Purcell," he added with a twinkle. He said he'd play music louder if it weren't for the need to hear the sounds of the boat.

One other skipper I talked to had been advised never to speak of hitting a whale in any kind of communications, only an an 'unidentified object' because of the possibility of negative publicity. My guess we will have many fewer collisions with whales in the future anyway because of this realisation.

Elaine Bunting

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Soldini celebrates total supremacy

28 May 2008

Absolute supremacy: that is the only way to describe Giovanni Soldini's domination of the Class 40 fleet in the Artemis Transat. He finished in Marblehead this morning, less than 8 hours behind the last of the IMOCA 60s.

Not that Soldini's victory was any surprise. The 42-year-old Italian sailing his Guillaume Verdier-designed Telecom Italia had complete control in the Transat Jacques Vabre race in November and is gaining an aura of unbeatability.

But of course there's a reason for this. Soldini is a past master in IMOCA 60s and ORMA 60 trimarans and comes to the class with an unmatched set of skills. The difference between his level of experience and those of a younger group of skippers, many of whom are hoping the Class 40s will take them onwards and upwards, is enormous.

The Artemis Transat has been a superb showcase for the Class 40s, in both the intensity of the racing in a variety of well matched designs, and their durability in some very rough sea conditions. Soldini's choice to join forces with this lower budget fleet makes it particularly interesting.

What the Class 40s deserve, and what British solo sailing needs as build costs for IMOCA 60s hit €2 million and running costs €1 million a year, is for some top level sailors to come in alongside Soldini, mix with a young and hungry generation of racers, boost the circuit with their profile and benefit by sharpening their own skills with close racing in smaller boats.

Elaine Bunting

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Peyron wins by going slower

27 May 2008

What is it like winning a race and establishing a new record in a time that's slower than when you won it before? That's what Loick Peyron did on Saturday when he won the Artemis Transat in Gitana 80 and set a monohull class record. He admits that it's a very different experience to when he won the race 12 years ago in the ORMA 60 trimaran Fuijifilm in 10d 10h - a full two days slower.

In any other sport, doing anything slower would be utterly perverse. And so it is in sailing, if truth be told, except for the inconvenient facts of supply and demand. The demand for ORMA 60 trimarans has dwindled, whereas IMOCA 60 multihulls have flourished So there has been an influx of former multi sailors, Loick Peyron among them, and you sense that Peyron is happy to find that he can change course and still be absolutely at the top of his career.

At 49, Peyron, is the maestro. He won Spi Ouest this year. He won the B2B solo race for IMOCA 60s in December. He is about to race in the Bol d'Or. Put Peyron on a maxi multihull or a hollowed out log and he could win. Pet't Loch, the little guy, is the supreme all-rounder.

But on the subject of returning to a slower type of boat he is particularly interesting. He says it's a challenge. "After multihulls it's less stressful and the funny thing is that, when reaching fast, for example, it is most dangerous on a multihull between 110 and 120°TWA, whereas on a monohull that is exactly the best and most comfortable angle. The only stress on a monohull is dead downwind under spinnaker.

"So it's less stressful and it's more comfortable but it's also more physical. On a multihull you have a lot less things to do. You carry and have to drag around less sails. On [IMOCA 60s] you have 9 sails compared with 3 on a trimaran and you pass all your time manoeuvring. OK, nothing is impossible, but you have a lot of systems - trim tabs, daggerboards - and more frequent adjustments. And because you are slower you cross more weather systems on the same course.

"Yes, there is a higher level than these monohulls, but it is much harder work here."

Elaine Bunting

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Stopping the killing

23 May 2008

I've had lots of emails from readers about collisions between yachts and whales. These are some of them:

From Dave Howorth: 'There's one very simple possibility that should be given a try - run the echo sounder so the animals can hear the boats coming. Maybe it would need some modification - forward facing and different frequencies perhaps.'

From Lucas Schroder: 'I raced in the Transat 6.50 last year (NED 633 T-Mobile One). On the Les Sables-Azores leg of the race in 2006 two open 6.50s hit a whale. I figured, a 800 kilo boat can't do that much damage to a large mammal like that. But a keel fin and bulb travelling at speeds over 10 knots can - I guess - do a lot of damage. Isn't there a solution to this horrible problem of collisions, one that keeps the sport more in balance with the environment it is in?'

And from Barrett Carr: 'Having just witnessed a baby deer laying in the middle of the road last night, bloody and desperately trying to get up after being hit by a car, I find myself particularly troubled by the tragic encounters with marine animals during the Transat. It bothers me that the tone of the reporting is more indicative of these creatures being a hindrance and causing damage to boats, rather than their being the victims of an increasingly competitive sport.

'It would be interesting if someone could develop a means of alerting marine life of the danger of a keel and bulb approaching at 25 knots. Would a sonar pulse or a strobe light pulsing from the keel of a boat warn of a boat's approach?'

I would be really interested to hear from anyone who knows more about this. I doubt the use of echo sounders is much of a deterrent, though. The solo sailors, like most of us, don't ever switch them off, so I guess we have to conclude that they don't work as a foolproof warning.

I also wonder how a sonar device would work. I can see it being effective at very slow speeds or in the tranquillity under the water, but you have to be on board one of these boats to appreciate just how much noise they make bounding across the sea surface. Could something work despite the noise and cavitation of water? As I say, I don't know - what do you think?

What I think is really shocking, though, is that the number of collisions between yachts and whales on this race is probably the only clue we will ever have to the scale of destruction being wrought every day by ships. This is the price sea creatures are paying for globalisation: all those ships bringing you and I cheap goods from sweat shops in the developing world, which we'll use and then chuck away into landfill.

There are around half a million ships worldwide over 1,000 gross tons. If even 1% of these were to run into a whale each year, that is terrible carnage, and ship owners have no incentive at all to research a deterrent. It doesn't cause damage to ships or knock even a fraction of a knot off the speed.

So don't castigate the poor sailors for being the ones to notice and report and care: surely it is to the shipping industry that we should be looking for proper research.

By the way, the photo above was taken by Sam Davies aboard the IMOCA 60 Roxy earlier this week. She reported: 'I was on deck yesterday evening to photograph another beautiful sunset when a huge whale popped up right in front of Roxy! Luckily (for the whale) we were only doing four knots at the time and it had time to see me.'

Elaine Bunting

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Whale collisions a perennial risk

22 May 2008

Hitting whales at sea - this is the topic du jour, I think, courtesy of misadventures in the Artemis Transat. These collisions are frighteningly frequent if you look at the anecdotal evidence, and perhaps becoming more so as yachts get faster and faster.

It makes you think, doesn't it, how many must be killed or maimed by ships? Their crews would know nothing of a collision with a whale.

Looking back at the more well-publicised collisions with whales, here's the damage:

1964 OSTAR: Derek Kelsall hit a whale 500 miles NW of Plymouth in his trimaran Folatre.

1988 OSTAR: Mike Birch's trimaran Fujicolour bady damaged in a collision with a whale. After a similar incident David Sellings's Hyccup sank and he had to take to his liferaft.

1996 OSTAR: Ellen MacArthur collides with and kills a whale, which stopped Kingfisher and was found wrapped round the keel. The boat was OK.

1998 Whitbread: Knut Frostad reports a collision with a whale on Innovation Kvaerner which broke several ring frames. "It was like being in a car crash," he comments.

2001 Vendée Globe: Raphael Dinelli's boat damaged during collision with whale

2002 Around Alone: Thierry Dubois hits a whale on the leg from New York to Brixham, damaging his starboard rudder.

2002: Jean Le Cam's Bonduelle badly damaged off Finisterre during a qualification for the solo Route du Rhum

2005 Jules Verne record: Bruno Peyron reports damaged rudder on maxi cat Orange 2 after collision with whale in South Atlantic.

These have been some of better publicised incidents, but don't let me give you the impression that collisions are restricted to racers, or biased towards solo sailors. There are plenty of examples among cruising sailors too.

For example, a couple of years ago a British family were sailing in a 40ft charter boat in Australia between Airlie Beach and Hook Island when a 30ft humpback whale leapt from the water and landed on their deck, dismasting the yacht. They said it slid back into the water, "uttering a long eerie groan."

Elaine Bunting

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North Atlantic 'teeming with life'

22 May 2008

Maybe the light winds and an unusual number of high pressure ridges in the North Atlantic have altered the course and swirling eddies of the Gulf Stream, or maybe the relatively fair weather has caused a surge in marine 'migration traffic' to summer feeding grounds (do let me know if you have any expert insight), but whatever it is the North Atlantic has been teeming with marine life this month.

The solo skippers of the Artemis Transat have certainly found it so: another collision with a whale today aboard Sam Davies's Roxy, causing damage to the starboard daggerboard.

I spoke earlier today to Dee Caffari on Aviva. She says it's been an incredible crossing for wildlife - like none she's known.

"There has been absolutely loads of marine life," she told me. "I've seen loads of Portuguese Man o' War [jellyfish], turtles, dolphins. I haven't seen any whales, though. I don't know if it's the mix of warm and cold currents that means food is in abundance, but there's been a lot.

"Yesterday when we were crossing through the ice gate [at 40°N], wherever you looked you saw something in the ocean. It was bizarre. A Portuguese Man o' War came by that was massive, a real big beauty and I thought 'Bloody hell!' There were dolphins as well."

Elaine Bunting

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Tragic deaths

22 May 2008

A comment from Ginny Jones about the Transat:

'The thought that an Open 60's keel cut a basking shark in half is truly tragic. They are the world's most gentle sharks -- you see them all along the west coast of Ireland and up in the Outer and Inner Hebrides, and the Scottish west coast. They are lazy, slow moving, and they just, well, they just bask on the surface. They are also endangered to a certain extent because they are so slow and lazy thus at risk from shipping. They are really interesting to see at sea, and pose little threat to anyone.

'I really, really hope that it wasn't a basking shark (and I'd be surprised if one was 40 feet) although I wouldn't want it to be a whale or any other marine creature either.'

Well, I agree with that. Hitting any marine mammal is not something any sailor wants to do either, and I don't mean for practical reasons, though that, too. But what to do?

Elaine Bunting

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More Transat roadkill

21 May 2008

Another gruesome piece of Transat roadkill.

This report came today from Thiery Bouchard on the Class 40 Mistral Loisirs - Pole Sante ELIOR: 'I have just run into a whale. The collision took place while I was down below eating. The bulb was embedded in the side of the whale. I went on deck immediately to see what was happening and I saw it in the middle of a pool of blood.'

This has been a bad fortnight for marine mammals in the North Atlantic. But it's still nothing compared with the destruction we wreak in our cars. An estimated 1.2 million animals are killed on UK roads every year and around 100 human deaths result from collisions with them.

Elaine Bunting

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Man bites shark

21 May 2008

Talk about tales of the unexpected. Vincent Riou, who was rescued from his Open 60 PRB yesterday in the North Atlantic after the keel was badly damaged, says he collided with a basking shark and cut it in two.

"I saw two portions emerge at the back of the boat," Riou commented, with forensic accuracy.

I find myself craving more information. Did he cut in half crossways or lengthwise? What did the 'portions' look like?

These boats are so fast they are increasingly sneaking up unawares on whales and sharks - there have been four collisions and at least 10 other whale sightings on the Artemis Transat.

But that's not quite as amazing as the leading edge of a canting keel chopping a 40ft shark in half. You can't class these incidents as normal marine collisions any more; this is roadkill.

Elaine Bunting

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Guillemot enduring the pain

19 May 2008

It's a rough ride to windward in the Artemis Transat and, as Mike Golding explains in his commentary, likely to get harsher when wind meets back-eddies of the Gulf Stream. So spare a thought for poor Marc Guillemot, who is strapped up after breaking a rib during a wipeout on the first few days of the race.

Just imagine grinding winches, lugging sails around, stacking gear from side to side and even just moving about and bracing yourself on a boat that is slamming hard every few minutes.

It would have been easy for Guillemot to turn for home when he was so near but he didn't, and that's the successful solo sailor in a nutshell: easy isn't even in the recipe.

If you remember, Bertrand de Broc sewed most of his tongue back on in the Vendée Globe in 1992, Pete Goss operated on his elbow with a scalpel and mirror four years later and Yves Parlier trawled for plankton with a staysail bag and survived on boiled algae in order to complete the 2000/1 Vendeé.

So you might say Marc Guillemot's experience is good training for the non-stop solo race round the world in November - it demands skill, determination, stamina, a dose of pig-headedness and a very high pain threshold.

Elaine Bunting

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Keeping an eye out

15 May 2008

A quite startling photo by the brilliant Thierry Martinez of TP52s Ono (foreground) racing under the eye of Caixa Galicia at the MedCup in Alicante.

Elaine Bunting

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