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One of the most hotly contested races on the circuit
On July 19, 2024, 72 solo sailors set off on the first leg of Les Sables-Les Açores-Les Sables. 47 of the Mini production boats and 25 of the proto boats set off for Horta, for a 2600-mile sail. This first leg is scheduled to last around ten days.
Among the competitors, Swiss skipper Benoît Alt took the start aboard his Hader Solutions proto, a mini he upgraded with large C foils during his winter refit. After this major refit, and having already raced the previous edition of the Mini Transat, Benoit knows his boat very well.
An invigorating start to the race
Just over a day after the start of the race, Benoit and the other competitors are in the Bay of Biscay. After a start in around ten knots, the wind has strengthened and conditions on the zones are very lively at the moment of interaction:
" It must have been 3pm. The sea was pretty rough and I was walking well, when I saw a group of orcas arrive. There were several of them, and they started circling me. It was very impressive, because they were bigger than my boat! And a lot heavier. My Mini displaces around 800 kg, whereas a single orca weighs around 4 or 5 tons. They started to take an interest in my foils, which have the largest underwater area, and they're painted fluo, like all my appendages. I stopped my mini as quickly as I could, because I can't lift anything when the boat is underway. The water pressure is too strong."
"It took me 5-6 minutes to stop and reassemble my foil and daggerboard. But in the same amount of time, one of them took an interest in my rudder and gave little strokes with its rostrum. By the time I got back aft to raise it, the rudder had already started to crack at the waterline. I just stood there corking away, unable to do anything. There was a good swell, which made it very uncomfortable. In all, they must have stayed there for a quarter of an hour, then left again."
No alternative but to abandon the race
The death toll was clear: the leeward rudder at the time of the attack was dead. But Benoît didn't notice any other damage. A stroke of luck on a very light boat, where the hull is only a few millimeters thick in places.
" A new front was expected a few hours later, and I didn't feel like attacking this low-pressure area with one rudder down. I still had at least 8 days at sea to reach Horta. So I decided to give up and head back to Les Sables."
"I was really disappointed. I was in the game with my proto, which had just come through a major winter refit, and I was beginning to see the benefits. The return to Les Sables d'Olonne was long and uncomfortable. Upwind, in air and with one rudder missing, I was regularly going to the dogs."
Benoît arrived in the Vendée harbor during the night, tired, but happy to have brought the boat back. The other competitors had to contend with 40-knot winds a few hours after Benoît's withdrawal, which caused a great deal of damage to the fleet. Although difficult, the decision to abandon was the right one.
