Whales make waves in transat

A fifth place for Sam Davies and Roxy in the Artemis Transat race was very much what I expected. Although some might point to the three retirements that elevated her position, the whole point of long distance solo racing is to get your boat to the finish.

The race was won for the third time by by Loick Peyron of France on Gitana 80 who finished the race in Boston with a time of 12 days 11hr 45min 35 sec, just over three-and-a-half-hours faster than the race record set four years ago by Mike Golding.

While Roxy's competitiveness has been diminished by the new generation of Open 60s, she is a proven design after completing (and winning) two earlier Vendee Globes and should give Davies every reason to be optimistic of completing the round-the-world race that starts in November.

It should be noted that three of the new generation boats - those of Mike Golding, Brian Thompson and Jonny Malbon, did not even make the Artemis start line, in two cases due to keel problems and the need for further testing.

The durability of some of the newer canting keels in round-the-world sailing has been the subject of some debate recently, not least because it raises significant safety issues for skippers. No-one wants to shed a keel and capsize a thousand miles out in the Southern Ocean.

Davies was one of two skippers who had collisions with whales during the transat race. Such hazards should not be taken lightly. You rarely hear anyone speaking up for the whale in these circumstances. It is as if the whale gets in my way, so tough.

But there is an argument that whales are not so much a hazard for racing yachts as the yachts are for whales. Whales have very good hearing. Is it beyond our capabilities to create some kind of ultrasonic device that would deter them from coming close to yachts?

Moreover the torpedo shape of the kanting keel is more hazardous for a whale than than a flaired keel. The torpedo acts like a hook. I haven't heard much discussion of this problem, yet it's a very real and serious issue for racers (and whales).

The very nature of round the world sailing means that some boats will not finish the Vendee. The race is a combination of speed, sailing ability, endurance, robustness of design and seamanship. This last point should not be underestimated. Seamanship is about taking account of many possibilities and trying to reduce risks in what is inevitably an event full of risk.

The transat will have been a disappointment for Dee Caffari who had the benefit of a new boat. No-one can question her gutsiness after sailing around the world alone against the winds and currents, but does she have what it takes to compete with the best French and British sailors in downwind events? She still has much to prove.

Three Sheets in the Wind

This was oh so nearly the title of my new blog, changed only because it might have given the misleading impression that I am inebriated much of the time. In fact it's only some of the time.

I never knew what the phrase meant until I looked it up on the web where it says it refers to sailors who have had a few drinks too many.

It was an expression used frequently in my family when I was growing up in Yorkshire. But there the phrase had a broader meaning. Yes, it could refer to someone who was the worse for drink. Alternatively it was used to describe someone who seemed nonplussed or confused, a condition that would account for much of my life.

Indeed when the waves are coming this way and that in a confused sea state I'd say it is a fair representation of my thinking patterns when sailing. Left brained and right brained thinking are meeting to create the perfect brainstorm.

Yachts are technical machines, designed to handle unstable systems. If understanding the numbers is a science, reading the wind is an art. Combining the two intuitively in race conditions requires the kind of skills for which I have the greatest admiration.

Add to this a whole new language, then you can begin to understand how someone who struggles enough with plain English might sometimes have trouble telling his luff from his leech.

So why do I do this stuff, not just casually, but the kind of racing where you have to tie your bowlines under pressure? It's a question I ask myself frequently. The answer always comes down to the same thing: it's the people.

For someone who works most of his time alone, I like the challenge of teamwork, the opportunity to be a human part of an imperfect machine, solving ever changing problems created by complex systems. Or maybe that's baloney and it's just the sea and the wind.

If you look in my sailing section here you can see the kinds of things I have done. I came late to sailing, having hardly stepped on a yacht before heading from Rio for Cape Horn and the Southern Ocean in the 1996/97 BT Global Challenge round-the-world race.

That shared experience of adversity led to new friendships and more sail racing. I even bought a dinghy and sailed that for a while. For the past three years, however, fishing has taken over much of my leisure time. Sometimes sailing and fishing have met head on, as they did when I took part in the Round Britain and Ireland Race in 2006, losing a day of my late summer trip to the River Dee as a result.

Now the Financial Times has asked me take over its sailing coverage. I have quite a few plans but I'm kicking off my new slot today with a piece about women in sailing, focusing on Sam Davies, competing just now in the Artemis Transat race. She's a lovely young woman and I wish her well.

For myself, I have no idea what the future holds but I know this much - it's going to be fun. So let's go sailing.