One-third boredom, one-third euphoria and one-third terror
(revised for the non-technical)

11/14, Stonington CT

I would like to thank everyone for their tremendous support over the past three years. When times were tough, I often thought of family and friends, friends of friends and people that I have never met who helped support my campaign and sent me supportive notes that I received prior to the start, in Maderia and at the finish. Thank you so much. --Clay

Years ago I heard a description of offshore sailing: one-third boredom, one-third euphoria and one-third terror.

Shortly after sunrise on the fourth morning after leaving Funchal, as I lay against the hull, firmly grasping the upper lifeline, I was definitely experiencing the terror. As I dangled two feet above the water, the boat racing along at 10 knots under autopilot with a double-reefed main (shortened mainsail) and the small white spinnaker, there was a sense of relief, thankful I was not body surfing along, attached to the boat by my safety line. Figuring that at any moment Acadia could roll aggressively in my direction, dumping me in the water, my mind focused on getting back on-board. I looked at the sponsorship weather cloth, an advertising banner, perfectly lashed to the lifelines, aft stanchion and stern pushpit by Rodney Johnstone. Using all of my upper body strength to support myself, I lowered my right leg that was hooked over the top lifeline and started kicking at the bottom section of the banner…I broke some of the lashings and managed to swing both legs onto the deck, under the lower lifeline. As if doing a chin-up, I hoisted myself up just enough to slide my left butt cheek over the corner of the deck. I rested for a few seconds and then, using all my remaining energy, leveraged the rest of my body on board. I unclipped the tangled safety line and slid into the cockpit.

I sat there dazed, somewhat numb to actually how close a call it had been. The previous night had been pure hell…at that point, I was not sure what to do. Maybe it was a young persons sport, perhaps at 49, my expectations were unrealistic. Quite frankly, I was not sure that I could go on; the stress level was out of control and mentally and physically I was shot. Sure, I knew I could make it to Salvador, and at anytime could scale back on the amount of sail I had up and make everything safe and rather comfortable. But I was not sure that I could keep up the pace required to be competitive, always pushing with the largest possible spinnaker, trying to stay inside the line of being out of control, though often crossing that line with potentially disastrous results. I dropped the small spinnaker and went below and slept for three hours.

The second leg of the Transat had started out well. With the help of Brian Green and John Groton in Funchal, Maderia, the boat was well prepared for the big 3100 mile transatlantic leg. For the start of the race the winds were out of the Southwest…the starting line was located about two miles off the harbor. Eighty-nine 21 foot solo boats on the same start can be a bit treacherous, though I was aggressive about staying near the line. Having the best start on a 3100 mile race is not really important, but for me, a good start is always a great psychological boost. The line was positioned in relationship to the wind in such a way that it was most beneficial to be near the committee boat, but this results in a pile up, with many racers all trying to start in the same place. I avoided the mess and started about one-third the way down the line. I crossed the starting line about 2 seconds after the horn sounded, and within the first minute was in third place.

There was one buoy, two miles from the starting line, that we were required to round before heading for Brazil, though I confused it with an orange buoy along the coast; I slipped back in position as I sailed into some wind holes that developed along the shore…I rounded the buoy in about 14 place. It was then close-hauled, with the sails trimmed in tight, trying to keep a southerly course to the Cape Verde Islands, about 1000 miles away. We were not stopping in the Cape Verde Islands, but were required to pass between Santo Antao in the west end of the island chain and Maio in the east (a gate 150 miles across), on the way to Brazil.

My weather routing had provided two options. The first was to go east after the start and head for the Canaries, hoping to pickup the Northeast trade winds by late on Sunday…though there was a ridge of high pressure across this route which meant that later on Saturday night into Sunday morning, there could be little if no wind; basically a parking lot until the trades winds filled in. Sailors selecting this option were hoping to punch through the ridge, pick up the trade winds first and also have a boost in wind speed as they passed through the Canary Islands. These wind acceleration zones, where the wind compresses between the islands and speeds up, can be beneficial (though sometimes it blows too hard), but skippers would also have to carefully avoid the areas of no wind that develop on the leeward side of each island; in Northeast trade winds, this “wind shadow” of no wind or fluky winds would be to the southwest. Competitors would sail longer distances by going with this eastern option, but it was hoped that higher boatspeeds would make up the difference.

The second option was to stay on the rhumb line, or straight line route to the Cape Verde Islands. A dissipating low pressure trough, which also meant light air, was near or just west of the rhumb line. It was predicted that light winds on this route would be less frequent and that the Northeast trade winds would fill in over the whole race course fairly rapidly. If this in fact happened, one would be able to sail fewer miles on this direct route, with boatspeeds similar to or better than those sailors selecting the longer, eastern option, resulting in a net gain.
I choose the rhumb line route.

As boats rounded the weather mark, many headed off slightly, to the point where they could hoist a larger jib called a gennaker; this helped increase their speed and soon they were off to the east, over the horizon. I questioned my decision, though figured I was in good company as Ives on Actual, Andrea on Speedi Bonzai, Alloys on Vecteur Plus and Kristian on Adria Mobil stayed close-hauled. By sunset, the winds had gone light and variable. I worked Acadia hard, tacking on the wind shifts, hoisting the gennaker as the winds came slightly aft, setting chutes (spinnakers) as it came from behind, then back upwind…constantly repositioning gear and supplies below to help keep the boat balanced. By 0200 on Sunday morning, the tricolor running lights of Speedi Bonzai and Vecteur Plus, both of whom had been about 2 miles ahead, where off the port side, by 0500 I could not see them anymore.

At 1100 on Sunday, I listened to the weather and position reports on Monaco Radio, a shortwave frequency used by the race committee. They would first provide weather forecasts in French and then in English; after they would list fleet positions…they would announce the position followed by the boat number, name of the boat, name of the sailor and number of miles to go to the finish.
I felt that that I had done well, though I also new that many boats were making up-front mileage sacrifices to get east, so overall positions would not mean anything for a couple of days.Nevertheless, when Denis Hughes, the race director, announced Acadia in first place, I was pleased to have my fifteen minutes of Transat fame.

For the rest of Sunday I battled shifty and light winds, mostly sailing with the gennaker or some spinnaker, at times thinking a new breeze had finally filled in, only to be overrun by a rain cloud which would often wipe out the breeze altogether…finally a puff again, stronger this time, enough to make me stack gear below to windward, then gone. At around 1500, about 10 miles ahead, there seemed to be a break in the cloud line… it was mostly sunny beyond that and it appeared as though there were low, small white clouds, typical of trade wind clouds. Two hours later I changed course and gybed onto port tack in a 10 knot Northeast breeze with the big chute up, we were moving along in perfectly flat water at 8 knots. That evening, it was an amazingly clear, moonless night… a thousand different stars to steer by. I stood on the weather rail, grasping a shroud, scanning the skies and listening to my IPOD – definitely one of those euphoric interludes.

The breeze remained mostly steady and the autopilot was happy; starting around midnight, I slept for 20 minute increments for 5 hours.

At the Monday 1100 weather and position reports, I had dropped back to fifth place. Actual and Speedi Bonzai were in first and second respectively and from a more easterly group of boats, Isabelle on Degremont and Nick on Rafiki were in third and fourth. Actual and Speedi Bonzai were roughly in the rhumb line area of the race course, similar to me. I was baffled to as to how they got past me in the light air.

The rhumb line to the Cape Verde Islands was to take me about 30 miles to the west of La Palma, the western most island in the Canary chain. With this course, I would end up passing approximately 55 miles to the southwest of the island, hopefully, well beyond any “wind shadow” in the Northeast Trades. If Tenerife at 12,000 feet can produce a wind shadow of up to 60 miles, I figured La Palma, at 8,000 feet high, should be less than 50.

I had been sailing slightly east of the rhumb line for about 14 hours, basically dead downwind on port tack. At about 1300, it was possible to see the northern shore of La Palma looming in the haze. The winds were now pushing 20 knots so I changed to the smaller medium red spinnaker and gybed onto starboard, steering west-southwest to get away from the island and back out to the rhumb line. I looked over my shoulder after gybing and saw Fabien on Soitec…he gybed about 20 minutes later and headed west as well. I kept this course for about three hours, moving along at 10 knots in a building seaway and winds that were now starting to blow a steady 23 knots with higher gusts. I switched to the small spinnaker and gybed back to port, heading about 200 degrees on a course for a waypoint that would take me 55 miles downwind of La Palma. Fifteen minutes later, Fabian gybed onto port as well.

As I passed to the west of the island, the seas were in a confused state and the winds increased to 25 knots with gusts to 30. When a gust came through, the increase in wind speed might last for 10 minutes or more. As my boat speed started to surge into the teens, I was thankful there was still a trace of daylight. At around 1800, I could barely see La Palma, off the stern; the GPS had me 56 miles south of the bottom end of the island. Ten minutes later, the wind dropped to about 12 knots. I doused the small chute, put up the large spinnaker and kept the boat moving at seven knots. Initially, I assumed this was the steady, gradient wind. Soon after, Fabien sailed into the same breeze…he pushed on for about 10 minutes, gybed away from me and back to starboard, and soon was in more wind, escaping to the west. Damn, definitely a wind shadow, at 56 miles…I gybed with the big chute and started heading west southwest. Within 15 minutes I was back in a building breeze, sailing a fairly deep angle, moving at around 10 to 11 knots; my course, compared to Fabiens’, seemed good. I tried to stay in this wind zone of 20 knots for as long as possible… I was having a great sail and the boat felt dialed in.

I gybed back to port on to a course that had me headed straight for the Cape Verde Islands. One hour later, not long after sunset, I was back in the stronger, gustier trade winds, still with the big blue spinnaker up. I put two reefs in the mainsail and hoped the conditions would soon moderate.

Fairly quickly, things started to get a little dicey.

I was sitting and steering from the very aft section of the deck, hard against the port stern pushpit. Virtually all of the gear below, including about 220 pounds of water in jerry cans, 30 pounds of methanol alcohol (to run my fuel cell), 80 pounds of freeze dried food and protein/energy bars, and 200 pounds of miscellaneous required safety gear, spare parts and spinnakers were jammed below, as far aft in the boat as possible… this helped to keep the bow from submerging when moving in big waves and a strong breeze downwind. The material was fairly evenly distributed on port and starboard, away from the centerline, in an attempt to try and minimize any wave induced rolling.
I leaned hard in-board to study the small digital display on the mostly analog wind instrument located on the starboard side of the cabin house bulkhead -- 26 knots, shit. The bow dipped down from its perch on top of a wave and the boat accelerated quickly; I glanced at the boatspeed dialed into one of the displays on the port side, 14.9 knots. The boat slowed to 11.5 knots and then slammed off a steep wave and started running again; it hit 13.5 before we plowed into the back side of the next wave, causing the boat to shudder and slow to 9 knots. My eyes were having a tough time focusing on anyone of the three digital compasses I could reference to help keep me on course; one was located on the port cabin house bulkhead, one on the starboard bulkhead and one was the COG (course over the ground) data box displayed on the GPS. The GPS sat on a swivel bracket, inside the boat, but I could move the display so that it sat perched in the open cabin hatch space, letting me view if from either side of the cockpit. The digital numbers, highlighted by green backlighting, were hard to see unless I was directly lined up behind the instrument. I had glasses that helped with the night vision, but salt spray quickly made them useless. I looked for anything in the night sky to steer by, but it was as black as I have seen at sea…100 percent overcast and no sort of moon looming above and illuminating the clouds.

A wave pushed the bow to the right and then rolled the boat hard to the left…without looking at a compass, I instinctively pushed against the loaded up tiller; I felt the wind against the back of my neck change and looked up to see wind on the wrong side of the mainsail, damn, the compass showed a course of 240 degrees instead of 210, into a gybe position. If the main had not been lashed out to the starboard side, it would have crashed across the boat. Come on Clay, steer 210, 210, 210…nothing but 210, damn it. I crouched on my knees on the cockpit floor to have a more direct of view of the instruments and better leverage on the steering by holding onto the tiller instead of the tiller extension. Acadia slammed down off of a steep wave, rolled to the right and started to head-up, into the wind. I pulled hard on the tiller and quickly released pressure as she zoomed down the next wave and back beyond 210 degrees, once again headed for a course of 240. Please Clay, 210, no higher, no lower. The boat slowed quickly as the bow burried at the bottom of a step wave. A wall of water came over the front of the boat and headed for the cockpit. I instinctively ducked but my forward facing position on the cockpit floor was too vulnerable... the wave flooded down the front of my foul weather gear jacket.

I kept hoping for some moderation in what I assumed was a gusting wind, but it did not come. With my headlight, I studied the spinnaker halyard and tack line (the tack line pulls the spinnaker out to the end of the pole) coiled on the cabin house. It was possible to steer the boat and barely reach the cabin house with the other hand…I waited for what seemed to be a steady wave pattern and then strained as I leaned forward, still steering with just the tips of my fingers. I grabbed a piece of each line and pulled them back to my space on the cockpit floor; they were then tossed off the stern of the boat in preparation for a spinnaker take-down.

The best way to be sure a line is knot/tangle free, which is critical for a quick and safe take-down, is to trail it in the water. I placed the autopilot drive motor on the locking pin located under the tiller and pushed and pulled hard to steer the boat, fighting the worm gear in the mechanical motor, waiting for the right moment…a surge of boatspeed, which results in less apparent wind, presented an opportunity. I jumped forward, hit the “auto” button on the instrument control head on the port bulkhead and leaned hard right, reaching under the boom to grab the spinnaker sheet…the boat heeled with my movement and the sheet moved away from my reach, out over the water. The heeling made Acadia head-up, quickly. I dove for the cockpit floor and uncleated the mainsheet, but no help, the main was already all the way out, against the shrouds. I grabbed frantically for the spinnaker sheet, secured in a Harken cam cleat on the windward side, and let it go. The boat was now almost headed upwind; everything was shaking violently as the big chute and the main luffed. The autopilot had the tiller full over to port but the boat would not bear-off…I hit the “standy” button, flicked off the autopilot ram and pulled the tiller harder to the left. The boat started to move to the right and sped up as the mainsail filled…with all my strength in my left arm, I pulled like crazy on the spinnaker sheet, trying to fill the sail with wind and stop the luffing.

At a compass course of 190 degrees, the chute filled with a large crack and the boat shot off, doing 14 knots, then 16.5. I looked at the compass, 240 degrees. Shit, steer 210 Clay, 210 damn it, nothing but 210. I cleated the spin sheet again and settled back onto the cockpit floor, trying to focus on one of the three compass displays. I was shaking. I was pissed for not being quicker at reaching the spin sheet and tack line. Frantically, I started pushing the “panic button” (a picture of a button with “panic” written next to it was drawn with a Sharpie marker on the left cockpit wall); I pushed at it about three times and then pounded it with my fist… I then started mumbling to the forces at sea, promising Neptune I would make a proper offering at the equator if I could just get the damn big chute down.

I sat on the cockpit floor, steering for another five minutes, trying to find the nerve to attempt the take-down again. The boat was completely out of control and it took every last bit of concentration I had to keep things from coming apart at the seams. I found myself thinking, “let God take it down”, the occasional phrase one might hear from the overzealous sailor with a big spinnaker in a lot of wind; though in addition to the spinnaker, God might take the mast, spinnaker pole and a few other things.

With the halyard and tack line still trailing off the back of the boat, once again, I placed the autopilot motor on the tiller locking pin and continued to steer, waiting for the moment. I went through the steps in my head, thinking to myself, make sure you open the tack line cleat and not the halyard cleat, whatever you do, blow the tack line (the cleats are located next to each other on the cabin house). Once the tack line is released, the spinnaker separates from the spin pole and collapses behind the mainsail, loosing all of its wind; it is then safe to carefully and slowly release the halyard and gather the spinnaker on-board. The boat started to surf down a fairly smooth wave and as the apparent wind dropped…I dove forward, hit the “auto” button, leaned hard to the right and grabbed the spin sheet and stretched with my left arm to reach the center of the cabin house, opening the cleat…a line went racing out, but the spin sheet was still loaded up in my right hand. I crouched down to look under the boom with my headlight and watched in disbelief as the spinnaker floated into the water…I had opened the halyard cleat. I reached back to the cabin house and opened the tack line cleat, then pulled like mad as the cute start to fill with water and drag behind the boat. A minute later it was on-board and amazingly, still all in one piece. I shoved and kicked to get it below, cursing as I did so. Saltwater now covered my living space, my area of refuge, aft of the keel box. I kept telling myself that sailing a Mini was a lesson in chaos management; the chaos will always be there. One must get used to it. Can’t dwell on it.

Though I was somewhat intimidated, I was determined to keep pushing hard, to stay up with the leaders. I flicked on the speaker circuit breaker and switched on the IPOD. Toots and the Maytals did some great tune with Bonnie Rait and then the Doors “This is the End” came on at full volume. I debated about hitting the forward button and moving to the next song, though the beat seemed appropriate for the conditions and I figured what the hell, if no sense of humor during the madness, it will be one hell of a long trip.

I went below and fought through the wet, blue spinnaker and crawling aft on the port side located the medium chute. I sat, semi-brain dead from the stress, and debated about whether or not to put a reef in the sail (the medium spinnaker had 650 square feet of sail area, though a zipper was stitched across the bottom and it was possible to make it into a fractional chute with 560 square feet of sail area). By keeping a double reef in the main, I figured it was probably okay to go with the full thing, so I jammed the bag on deck and scrambled forward, clipping the bag onto the starboard lifeline in front of the shrouds. I spent five minutes re-leading the tack line and spin sheets, double checking all was okay, then attached everything to the corners of chute.

Spinnaker sets in a big breeze are always a bit hair-raising, and on a dark, windy night in difficult seas, even more so. I stood aft of the cabin house, both hands on the halyard, trying to muster the nerve to go with the hoist…sort of like standing on a dock, ready to dive into cold water…one knows a shock to the system awaits soon after you have left the dock, so for awhile, you stand there. NOW--- I pulled with both arms making long, full length strokes from as far as I could reach to as far as I could swing an arm aft, getting the chute up in about four seconds. I then pulled like crazy on the tack line, the spinnaker briefly filling with wind as it went out to the end of the pole, then collapsing with a bang as the boat started to head up…I fell onto the port (windward) deck, pulling the sheet as I went, again using both arms, pulling like mad. Snap, the chute filled and the boat went racing off, then heading up, the sail collapsing as it did so. I pulled more on the sheet, but it was jammed. I placed the boat back on autopilot, dead downwind, on the edge of gybing, the chute filled with a cracking sound. What the hell? I studied the bow with my headlight but it was not bright enough. I grabbed my “moonlighter” torch and looked again. The windward sheet, which was tied to the spinnaker but not being used, was cleated and oddly keeping the chute full; the leeward sheet, used for trimming, was somehow wrapped around the end of the spinnaker pole. I crawled forward with the end of leeward sheet and started to make it snake through the air, trying to snap a twist in the line as it reached the end of the pole…after three minutes, one wrap at the end of the pole had been undone. I then threw the line out beyond the pole, trying to undo one final twist and get it on the proper side of the bobstay line (the line that comes up from the bow and acts as a pole downhaul). On the second try it worked, I reach forward over the side, grabbed the line bouncing in the bow wave, scrambled aft, re-fed it through the block and trimmed… the boat started moving at around 12 knots.

I was exhausted, thirsty and hungry, “Franklin’s Tower” by the Dead was blaring from the cockpit speakers…I placed the boat on autopilot and leaning below from the cockpit, managed to open the food tub and extract two Cliff bars and two GOOs…the boat suddenly rolled hard to the right. I stood up behind the cabin house and dove to the left, trying to balance the boat; Acadia then rolled hard left…I then dove to the right, the boat steadied for a second and then rolled hard to the right again…I dove left, though moved back to the middle of the boat as soon as she started to balance herself. I did this dance for two minutes until the wave pattern settled again. Hmm, the Acadia shuffle. Hoping things were under control for a few seconds, I scurried below, searching for fresh water. The boat rolled hard to windward, to the left, and started to round down into a gybe… a large bang came from forward and as I scrambled on deck the spinnaker was way to windward, the pole was burying into the waves and the main was backwinded, the preventer line on the starboard rail straining to hang onto the thing. Please no, don’t let the race be over now, I thought, damn it, not now… everything was extremely strained and loaded and it felt like it was all ready to come down. The boat was heeling about 70 degrees to windward and I clutched tightly to the winch on the starboard deck, trying to stay in the cockpit. I found the spin sheet in the mess of lines, under my knees, and uncleated it. The boat rolled back up and was quickly to the point where I could steer again. Wow, I had never been so terrified at sea. I glanced up at spinnaker and saw a small tear in the bottom left corner of the chute; I debated about whether to fix it or not, though the sail needed to last for another two weeks and I had to find out what seemed to have exploded forward. I doused the chute fairly efficiently and jammed it below. For ten minutes, I just sat in the cockpit, relieved to only have the main up… tough race if it is like this the whole time, I thought.

I clipped into the safety tether and moved forward. One block used to guide the tack line through the pulpit had disintegrated and the Spar Tite, an epoxy used to form a collar around the mast and hold it in place as it went through the deck, had popped up…the mast was moving free in the deck partners, slamming as the boat rocked in the waves. I grabbed a winch handle and pounded the Spare Tite back down; five minutes later it had popped up again. Fortunately there was one padeye in front of the mast and numerous behind--- I spent the next two hours lashing from one padeye to the next, trying to keep the epoxy tight in the hole. During my repairs, two boats sailed on by; I assume one was Fabien on Soitec and was not sure of the other. It would be the last time I would see another Mini for 16 days.

Finally, I replaced the block on the bow and as the sun was rising, hoisted the small spinnaker. I went below, repaired the medium chute with some rip-stop tape, had something to eat and made coffee. During the round-down, when the boat was trying to gybe, the headstay had appeared to be very loose, so I went forward to inspect the lashings… it seemed okay. When moving aft I was careful, as always, to keep one hand on the boat at all times, though there was a split second when I released my grip on the windward shrouds as I was leaning to grab the cabin house winch; the boat lurched on a wave… to my amazement, I was in the air, moving over the lifelines. It was a low trajectory and I was able to grab the upper lifeline as I went over the side --- shit, outside the boat.

I awoke at 1045 after a solid three hour sleep, in time to tune into Monaco Radio and hear weather and fleet positions. I had slipped back, well into the teens. The race director announced the prototype positions and then the series positions; from what I could tell from miles to go the finish, it sounded like 3 series boats had moved well in front of me in addition to many prototypes. The winds had moderated back into the low 20s. I thought, no stinking series boat is going to beat me in this race… I reached below, grabbed the big blue spinnaker, clipped it in and hoisted; the boatspeed climbed from 8 to 10.5 knots and I had a fast, fairly comfortable sail for the next five hours. Only sixteen more days to go.

... TO BE CONTINUED