Having gotten over the disappointment to how my first leg of La Solitaire has gone, I am now already starting to look forward to next Sunday’s start.

The first 24 hours went generally badly for me, every decision I seemed to make turned out to be the wrong one. Nothing that wasn’t recoverable however, and while at the back of the pack, I was still confident I could recover some time and get back in the mix, especially with the high pressure and trough still to cross in Biscay.

However, whether it be from my wild youth, inexperience or just a continued theme of my poor decision making, I choose to split from the fleet and go looking for breeze on the eastern edge of the high, a generally bad move as North East was the direction it was heading, and so while it looked good originally, the centre of the high moved back over me, so I sat and watched everyone sail away from me to a 30 mile lead until I could sneak out. Probably some of the most painful and frustrating hours I have experienced sailing in my life. Ouch.

That being said, as sails go, I actually had a great time and loved it, I love the longer periods at sea, getting into your routine, and I had some of the best and most memorably enjoyable times on the water of all this year on this leg. A bit of catching up on sleep required over the next few days then time to get stuck into Leg 2, a fire’s brewing in my belly, a point to prove.

Allez,

H

A few days ago we were sent an email from Artemis HQ asking us to answer some questions about life on board and ourselves, I didn’t exactly take it too seriously at the time which is something I maybe regretting now…

Click here for link

After a day of walking around Lorient, soaking up all things Volvo we are all feeling suitably motivated and enthused about our upcoming solo marathon.

We bumped into a wide variety of people today. Mike Sanderson showed us round Sanya (hour long personal tour, incredible), Amory Ross around Puma, we got a tour of Abu Dhabi too, got interviewed by Volvo itself (Link here) and bumped into JP Dick and the IMOCA class secretory Luc Talbourdet.

With so much uncertainty in the world of Volvo, IMOCA and Class 40′s to an extent, it was fascinating to chat with everyone about all the goings on, they were all amazingly honest with their opinions on the state of play which gave us a lot to discuss on the ride home.

To cut to the chase, the one thing I took from the day is that the figaro is absolutely the right place to be. A brilliant concept and race, run professionally, commercially, with an amazing bunch of tip top sailors, from experienced old hands to ambitious young wannabes like us Artemis bunch.

The fact it attracts the best sailors back year on year and that Volvo sailors/skippers are keen to get involved in off periods speaks for itself.

I am not sure if it’s possible, but I am now even more excited to be starting my first figaro this sunday…

Link to our new found fame on the Volvo website – Click here

Allez,

H

A nicely put together video from the prologue race yesterday with some nice shots of us all trying our best to just get around the course in 30+ knots of breeze. Biggest gust came in at 44 knots for me, had a bit on it is fair to say!