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Leg 1: La Rochelle (France) Portsmouth(UK) 500 miles

The departure was given on Saturday, the 19th of May in La Rochelle (France) and the destination was Portsmouth (UK). The wind was mainly blowing from the North as a high pressure was over the golf of Biscay.

After a good start and the right strategy, My Workplace passed below the bridge of ile de Ré in third position. But during the following night, a risky route option based on weather forecast put My Workplace in twelfth position.

During Sunday, as the wind was blowing very lightly, My Workplace sailed close to shore to take advantage of the thermal wind and managed to come back in contact with the race leaders before the channel crossing.

The channel was crossed on Monday with a strong wind blowing from Northeast as the high pressure was now moving on UK. All the boats were still sailing close to the wind in choppy waves and very wet and cold conditions.

All Tuesday was spent tacking in the Easterly wind and the Isle of Wight was reached on Wednesday morning. At this time, the wind dropped below two knots and with a strong tidal stream up to 3.5 knots, all boats started to drift backward. The only solution was to drop the anchor and wait for the tide reversal. Portsmouth was reached on Thursday morning at 1:46 am in fourth position and 37 minutes after the winner.

Leg 2: Portsmouth (UK) Saint Quay Portrieux (France) 200 miles

The departure was given on Friday at 12:00 am, so not much rest after a tough first leg. The wind was blowing around 10 knots but the forecast for the night was no wind at all. Difficult start for My Workplace as sea algae got caught in the keel and rudder twice and after a few attempts to remove them, it was necessary to take the boat up to the wind and make her go backward to get free of the algae. The rest of the fleet did not wait to pass in front at this time.

Mini-Pavois May 19th-27th La Rochelle (France) -> Portsmouth (UK) -> St Quay Portrieux (France) My Workplace won this 700 mile race	Mini-Fastnet June 10th-17th St Quay Portrieux (France) -> Fastnet light House -> Douarnenez (France) My Workplace finished 3rd in this 800 mile race. More…

On Friday night, as the wind died away and the tide reversed, the anchor was dropped from 12 pm to 2 am. The rest of the race was very tactic as the wind was between 3 to 10 knots and tidal stream was up to 4 knots. Lots of calculation of apparent wind, tidal stream wind and drift were necessary to follow the best route to the finish line which was passed on Sunday, 5:17 PM, in second position and first overall.

Two days and 5 hours for the 200 miles second leg, a rather slow race at a walking speed. Only 1 and forty minutes of sleep broke into three, as bad as a logging job.

Finishing 3rd in the Transgascogne

Leg 1: Port Bourgenay Gijon (via Ile d'Yeu and Belle-Ile)

The race started on Sunday 29^th of July at 3 PM under a light wind. As expected in those conditions, the predominant wind was caused by the temperature difference between the sea and the shore. This gave a shifting wind and a technical upwind sailing towards the first mark of the race, the island of Yeu. Yeu was passed around midnight in a wind below 2 knots. The rest of the night was very calm with a 3-4 knots wind. Comfortable sailing, but in order to take advantage of any possible wind shift it was necessary to steer the boat most of the time (rather than take advantage of the auto-pilot). As a result I felt quite tired on Monday morning, with only half an hour sleep in the last 24 hours.

In this light wind I decided to favor speed rather than direction and sailed under gennaker for most of the morning.

I was not making direct course to the next race mark, the island of Belle-Ile, but as I was expecting a wind rotation I did not mind too much on not sailing close to the wind. The only risk was if the wind change was not coming or coming too late……this is partially what happened and I ended up being too far south of Belle-Ile when the wind shifted.

Sailing now towards the south point of Belle-Ile (Pointe de Kerdonis), I ended up in a dead calm and was stuck for a few hours.

Around midnight I finally passed the north cape of Belle-Ile, far behind the leaders, and started sailing towards Gijon on the morning of Tuesday 31st. From the weather forecast I could see the route was clear for two long tacks under spinnaker with a jibe around half way.

In the evening, as expected, the wind picked up to 25 knots with gusts below clouds. This was exactly the weather I was anticipating to come back in a good position. With thousands of miles of practice under spinnaker, I was able to push the boat limits further than most of the other competitors. On Wednesday morning I was fourth; very tired but satisfied by the 15 miles I had gained toward the leaders.

The atmospheric pressure started to drop as well as the wind, meaning we were entering a low pressure zone. This weather pattern had been predicted but the timing was different, so I prepared the boat for the 180 degrees wind rotation we could expect coming out of this low pressure. After an hour of calm, the wind came back and I finished the race in contact with the third competitor and just 3 minutes behind.

Leg2: Gijon Port Bourgenay

The wind forecast for this race was relatively simple. For the first night we could expect light wind from the North and then strong wind from the West the following day up to Port-Bourgenay.

Transgascogne July 29th -August 8th Port Bourgenay (France) -> Belle Ile -Gijon (Spain) My Workplace finished 3rd in this 550 mile race.	Winning the Mini-Pavois My Workplace finished first over 25 competitors in this challenging race 700 miles long.

Right from the start I tried to position My Workplace as far North as possible in order to be one of the first boats to catch the westerly wind. This worked well as My Workplace was positioned first the following morning. When the wind picked up the following morning, the aim of the game was to hold the spinnaker longer than the other competitors without breaking anything.

The small video clip starts after I took down the big spinnaker (72 m2)—to prevent blowing it out—and I am hoisting the heavy spinnaker (50 m2) and reefing the main sail. I kept on looking behind me to make sure no boats were catching up. The difficult part of this game is to keep as much sail as possible without losing control of the boat. Every time the boat goes out of control 5 to 20 minutes can be lost depending on the necessity of taking down the spinnaker to bring the boat upright. This is assuming nothing serious is broken. On this race two masts, 4 booms and 3 spinnaker poles were broken, 5 spinnaker destroyed and all that occurred when the skippers lost control of their boats.

On the video clip, you can see My Workplace going out of control when I was busy putting away the video camera control. Fortunately that was nothing serious and the boat was back to speed a few seconds later.

On this second leg, My Workplace finished first with one hour in advance on the second competitor. Overall, My Workplace is third of the race.