Ian Lipinski: A few days after a happy ending for me on this first leg of the Mini Transat 2017, here I am back ashore, but still with my head in the clouds.
So many emotions lived during eleven days!
First of all, the departure, even if it is the third for me, remains a special moment. There is impatience to go, but also stress and apprehension. Probably a bit of fatigue accumulated in the last few days with all the excitement in the race village. However, I was lucky enough to have two great friends with me, Pic and Julien, who spent 10 days preparing the boat for the little onions ... incredible comfort (thank you both a thousand times!). Family and friends also gave a little help...
And so that's it, 3 hours before the cannon shot, we meet on the water around the starting line. The time passes, we observe the conditions, the fog falls, the visibility decreases, and when finally comes the beginning of the 8 minutes before the start. That's when everything speeds up and you have to be at 300% of your potential. But an electronic problem suddenly occurs, depriving me of the automatic pilot!!! Without pilot, I have only one possibility, to return to port to repair! It's a stab in the heart that speeds up my heart rate even more, if possible! I rush inside praying that nobody hits me, I disconnect some cables, I reconnect others, I try to restart the pilot in "degraded" mode... OUF!!! it works! We're three minutes away from the start... "Good start" says the race committee on the VHF. I'm well on the line, but my heart is still in the right place!!!
For the first hour, I'm accompanied by... A few tacks to the door that marks the exit of the bay. I'm at the head of the fleet. It's really going!
The next stage is a battle in light airs to reach the Spanish tip, with Erwan Le Mené still a little bit ahead of me, at ease in these conditions. I'm getting a very big fright at night close to the Spanish coast, a trawler that I have to avoid at the last moment. I put in a rather hasty gybe under the lights of his lights and his rather bitter comments on the radio! I came out of the event with shaky legs and it took me several minutes to recover.
After three nights of racing, we're approaching Cape Finisterre, a dreaded passage where the wind can accelerate suddenly and where the sea quickly becomes impassable. Erwan and I are already well into the red in terms of sleep and at the same time we're adopting a very wise attitude to tackle this passage. We're dropping the spinnakers and taking advantage of the drop in wind speed to get an hour's sleep. I'm then the first to hoist some canvas when the sea calms down a little bit. A short time later, she stows away frankly... The moment to press the accelerator. All I have to do is let go of the reins and the boat gets going, showing once again how extraordinary she is. I literally fly on the water, balancing on the keel transformed into a foil, Griffon.fr and I pass the waves without touching them. A delight that lasts almost 20 hours, at the end of which I have built up a small lead over my competitors.
Unfortunately, the next stage will prove to be much less sporting, as as as we head southwards, we get closer to a huge windless zone. After careful consideration, I decide to try to go around it by obliquely steering my route eastwards for a whole day. I wasted no time, I got stuck in the calm. It's going to last three days, punctuated by the daily announcements of the rankings in which I see myself losing miles by the dozens. It's bound to affect my morale. I can imagine arriving many hours late, compromising any chance of winning on the second leg. It's hard, very hard! You feel helpless, as without wind, it's impossible to strategise. So we're forced to move forward metre by metre, on a sea of oil, exploiting the barely perceptible micro-missiles, which are so subtle!
I'm still very hopeful, as I think I'm sailing in the east of Arthur Leopold-Léger, who is now leading the race! The "miracle" (but it's not a miracle, I'd finally taken the right option of going east), comes at 12hrs from the finish, when I was 20 miles behind Arthur, the wind is finally coming back, and from the east! So I'm benefiting from it first and I'm back at the head of the stage. Of course, if you find out at the first rankings in the morning, I don't know yet (we only have a ranking once every 24 hours, at midday). It's two hours from the finish in Las Palmas that I hear the latest rankings, I learn the great news! Not only am I no longer behind, but I'm in the lead by two miles. The first Zodiacs are approaching me, I'm exulting! Yet on the horizon Arthur's sails appear. He's coming from the north, I'm coming from the north-east. In a final effort, I'm getting back into regatta mode in contact. As we approach the finish line, our paths finally cross. There are hardly three boat lengths between us, but I'm in front and I can control Arthur by performing two successive gybes to place myself between him and the line. It is with enormous joy that I cross it. What a contrast to just two hours earlier!
So I'm in a superb position to attack the second stage! Erwan and the others... are two hours and more away. It's better to have them ahead than behind. Nothing's done !!!
Here is to finish the video of this first stage... with some moments when it comes down, and others a little bit quieter!
