The Sail to the Solitaire

Imagine taking 35 top level endurance drivers, giving them identical cars, banning team radio and external information, and making them drive day and night for several days straight on almost no sleep. Then imagine the whole field finishing within a few minutes of each other and it’s on water.

It’s three solo races back to back, each roughly 600 miles and 4 days long. First the fleet will go up to Cornwall before punching south, through the Bay of Biscay, to Spain. The second race is back to France and the final race takes the fleet round the highly tidal Brittany peninsula, back to the south coast of the UK before finishing in Le Havre.

Because it’s the same hull, same sails, same everything, the result comes down almost entirely to the sailor. Strategy, boat speed, weather calls, endurance, consistency. Because of this it’s considered: “the hardest race – not to win, just to do. Winning is something else,” says Michel Desjoyeaux. “For me, the Figaro is harder than the Vendée Globe.”

The racing is brutal in a specific way: sailors sleep in short bursts so as not to miss small shifts that could represent small gains. After hundreds of miles offshore, competitors regularly finish within minutes of each other.

I have now competed in two solo races and a winter’s worth of training with the elite Lorient Grand Large group. Sometimes brutal conditions. I’ve learnt a lot from the season so far — about the racing, the boat, and about myself.

On the boat side:

• Clear air is king and it’s worth tacking off to get it
• Rudder angle is hugely important for high speed downwind
• As speed increases foil rake lessens
• Dried Mango is all you need

On the personal side:

• I can race solo and I can be competitive
• Sleep and warmth are key
• Solo racing is about pre-planning and redundancy. The more you plan before first contact, the more space you give yourself to react quickly
• Fear is a natural performance enhancing drug and perfectly fine as long as you keep a sense of humour

With a 30th and a 7th in my two solo races I’m now qualified for the Solitaire. I also got the opportunity to sail the last race with Ocean Race sailor and fellow Mustang Survival ambassador Cole Brauer as co-skipper. Watching someone of her calibre work through my boat was really cool, the way she prioritises energy management over heroics quietly changed how I think about preparing for a solo campaign and the ergonomics of my kitchen stove/water system. I’m carrying those lessons onto the Solitaire.

It’s now exactly two weeks till the start and I’ve planned the lead up carefully. The last week has been about making improvements to the boat:

• Winches serviced
• Engine service
• Floatation foam dried
• Boom removed and outhaul refitted
• Keel bulb repair
• Full boat clean
• Safety checklist gone through
• New jib sheets
• Bowsprit tensioning

The next week is a light training week, three days on the water, two days of admin. I want to stay sharp and in tune with the boat without arriving at the start line already tired. I know I’m capable of competing. What I need now is to create the environment that lets me do it. A gentle few days: buy the food, write the blog etc. Once the boat is delivered to the race village there’ll be media, meteorological work, pre-race strategy and safety checks. A hectic final week. And I’ll find out whether I’m really tough enough to do my first Solitaire du Figaro.