STORM TACTICS
Ocean storms and months of isolation may not be your idea of fun, but there are lessons about how to cope with heavy weather for all of us from the competitor's experiences
The Golden Globe skippers share what they learned dealing with the world’s most extreme conditions
he Golden Globe Race is like no other yacht race. It has been held only twice – in 1968-69 and in 2018-19. In the first edition, nine skippers crossed the start line, with only Sir Robin Knox-johnston finishing the race. Fifty years later, just 18 skippers were willing to circumnavigate the world in long-keeled boats of 36ft or less and without the use of modern technology and equipment.
Southern Ocean storms left four of the entrants dismasted, with three needing rescue. Others
Texperienced multiple knockdowns or pitch-poling in heavy weather, while some were forced to end their race due to injury or equipment failure, including a dismasting. All lived to tell their stories.
As cruising sailors, we may never sail the Southern Ocean, but what these skippers learned from the 2018-19 Golden Globe Race is gold dust for us. They have withstood extreme conditions for such prolonged periods that they were able to try every tactic and strategy available, and draw firm conclusions about what really worked for them and their boats. We hope never to encounter such conditions, but we can stash these lessons away for use in heavy weather closer to home.
Jean-luc Van den Heede
Rustler 36 Masthead sloop, Matmut, with modified keel-stepped mast, 1.5m shorter than standard.
Previous solo circumnavigations: 5
Position in race: 1st 211 days, 23 hours 12 minutes.
‘If I hadn’t shortened my mast by 1.5m and I had started with the longer mast then I would have been dismasted. I am the only one to have capsized completely and still have his mast,’ reflects Jean-luc Van Den Heede when asked about his end-over-end pitch-pole in the Southern Ocean.
The 73-year-old veteran, who initially considered competing in a Gaia 36, spent two years preparing his Rustler 36, Matmut, deciding to shorten the mast by 1.5m after sailing her in Biscay over the winter season. He used no warps or drogue in the race, instead favouring Bernard Moitessier’s philosophy of going as fast as possible in heavy weather, and running with the breaking waves at a shallow angle.
‘The mistake I made when I damaged the mast was that I didn’t put a big enough angle between the waves and where they were hitting the boat,’ he explained.
The knockdown in 11m (36ft) seas and 65-knot winds caused the starboard lower shroud’s connecting bolt attachment to slip 5cm down in the mast section, slackening the rigging.
He made repairs using shackles and Spectra line (for which Van Den Heede had been given special dispensation by race organisers to repair his Walker log shortly before the race start).
Van Den Heede also believes his mast might not have been damaged in the knockdown if he had 6mm rigging with a little more give instead of the 8mm prescribed by the race committee, a point which is being reviewed for the 2022 race.
Ahead of the race start, Van Den Heede also consulted meteorologists about the best route, helping him to make gains early in the race.
Mark slats
Rustler 36 Masthead sloop, Ohpen Maverick
Previous solo circumnavigations: 1
Position in race: 2nd 216 days, 0 hours, 18 minutes
Mark Slats prepared for the race in five months, having focused a great deal of his time on winning the singlehanded class in the 2017 Talisker Atlantic Rowing Challenge. His lack of preparation meant Van Den Heede had the edge. It also meant Slats had only one pair of socks and no gloves, a fact he cursed when hauling in warps barehanded. Caught in the same storm system which dismasted Gregor Mcguckin and Abhilash Tomy, Slats, who was east of them, had already experienced multiple knockdowns while trailing warps.
The Dutchman decided that sailing at ‘maximum power’, in the same direction as the waves was the best storm tactic. He had prepared warps on a bight with three reefs in the main, his stay sail and storm jib when the front passed and the wind backed dramatically. A massive 20-25m (65-82ft) wave smashed into the back of the boat, stoving in the hatch, rolling the boat to 120º and filling it with water.
‘I threw the lines out quickly so the boat stayed with the stern to the waves and then spent one hour hand pumping [to remove the water]. I then went out to hand steer because the windvane was not working [the cable between the windvane and tiller had broken], but within five minutes the boat was knocked down again and I was thrown overboard and then thrown into the boat again,’ recalled Slats, who was clipped on.
Amazingly he replaced the broken cable, hanging over the back of the boat in 70-knot winds. Once the Aries windvane was working again, he pulled the lines back in, and Ohpen Maverick ‘began to sail a lot better’.
Jean-luc Van Den Heede had set up a HAM weather network before leaving, which many of the skippers used. After the storm, Slats’ mother began providing recorded weather advice, played to him over HAM radio, which was shared with the rest of the fleet. Earlier in the race, many skippers picked up the Global Maritime Distress and Safety System (GMDSS) weather on their radios, although Slats said the storm which hit him, Mcguckin and Tomy wasn’t forecast; the areas covered are also large, making detailed weather forecasting difficult. Many skippers said they were struggling to pick up the frequencies for GMDSS on entering the Southern Ocean as the broadcasting network has shrunk as more mariners rely on satellite communication.
GREGOR MCGUCKIN
BISCAY 36 Masthead ketch, Hanley Energy Endurance
Previous solo circumnavigations: 0 Dismasted 21 September 2018 in Southern Ocean, 40º23’s, 075º27’e
Sometimes luck, or the lack of it, is a factor. Gregor Mcguckin was sailing under bare poles and trailing warps in a Force 10, doing between 3-4 knots, when he lost his main mast in the same storm which hit Abhilash Tomy. It also destroyed his windvane and his engine wouldn’t work.‘the boat was doing what it was supposed to do but the seas were huge cross seas. In those kind of conditions, when you have breaking waves from three different directions, you are either lucky or you’re not,’ noted the Irishman, who has thought long and hard about whether his warps were long enough.
‘The boat wasn’t surfing so maybe I could have put out more, but I don’t think it was that that caused the knockdown.
The boat was pointing where it was supposed to be pointing; it was stern-on to the majority of the waves. What happened was when the cross seas hit me from the side the boat didn’t surf or broach, it didn’t get pushed beam on; it was just a phenomenally big wave that took me. I don’t think longer warps would have made any difference.’
Mcguckin had already lost his mizzen mast in an earlier knockdown, in which he hadn’t been trailing warps. He had previously tried a drogue, but the sheer effort of pulling it in almost made him cut it free.
The delivery skipper said he had thought about the worst case scenarios while refitting the boat. He made a series of ‘Oh shit’ crib cards to help him deal with an emergency onboard even when sleep deprived and stressed. This helped him, especially when he was left with one slightly bent spinnaker pole to make his jury rig. He eventually managed to use the foot of the mast to brace the spinnaker pole before making shrouds and tensioning them.
ABHILASH TOMY
ERIC SUHAILI
Replica masthead ketch, Thuriya
Previous solo circumnavigations: 1 dismasted 21 September 2018 in Southern ocean, 39º38’s, 077º23’e
Abhilash Tomy took no warps or drogue. His previous circumnavigation was in the 22 tonne, 17m (56ft) fin-keel sloop INSV Mhadei. Building a replica of Sir Robin Knox-johnston’s Suhaili and then shipping it from India to Europe caused delays, and meant he didn’t sail Thuriya as much as he would have liked before the start. He was also preparing up to the last minute, which left him exhausted. He slept for long periods while in the North Atlantic, only starting to experiment with the ketch’s sail configuration after the Canaries. Keeping the staysail on permanently gave him ‘a nice overlap between the jib and the main sail’, and by mid September he was in third place. But when the storm hit, Tomy found himself struggling to steer, irrespective of the sail configuration. Thuriya was lying under bare poles beam on to cross seas in 75-knot winds when she experienced multiple knockdowns and was dismasted. Like the other boats in the area, Race HQ had warned Tomy about the impending storm, although 50 knots was expected. He prepared the boat, which was too slow to outrun or side step the extreme weather.
The knockdown left Tomy with a broken back and in need of rescue. Weeks earlier, he had found out from his wife, via an obliging ship, that he was to become a father. ‘When I realised I had lost the mast and could not stand up I thought maybe the positive thing is that I can be with her during the pregnancy. That really helped me deal with the situation,’ he said.
SUSIE GOODALL
RUSTLER 36
Masthead sloop, DHL Starlight
Previous solo circumnavigations: 0 dismasted 5 december 2018 in Southern ocean, 45º27’s, 122º23’w
Throughout the race, Susie Goodall changed storm tactics, using both a drogue and warps. Like Mcguckin and Tomy she was caught in a storm early in the Southern Ocean, describing 70-knot winds and 15m (50ft) seas, with waves coming from four different directions. She was knocked down several times. The conditions left her windvane bent and having to hand steer to keep DHL Starlight stern-to the waves.
Speaking at the Hobart gate, she said: ‘Every storm is different, and before this one I used to deploy a drogue to slow the boat down. I don’t know why, but in that last storm I towed warps and hand-steered to keep the boat stern-to and it seemed better. My tactic had been to let the boat sail through it, but that time I couldn’t.’
She was using a drogue when her boat pitch-poled and dismasted. It had been performing well, until the drogue hawser snapped, propelling the boat forward just as a rogue wave hit. It ended her race. Having read Roger Taylor’s Mingming & the Art of Minimal
Ocean Sailing, Goodall told YM that she hadn’t used a bowline to secure the hawser [Taylor lost his drogue in the North Atlantic after securing his hawser with a bowline]. It was later found that the drogue failed on the manufactured Flemish loop on the rode. The manufacturer, Ocean Brake, has now changed the way it makes the ends of its drogues.
‘We stopped using Flemish loops about a year or so ago in most cases, as it was only to allow people to add more cones more easily,’ Ocean Brake’s Angus Coleman told YM. ‘We only use soft eye splices on the inboard end of the drogues now. I think there were various factors at play [in Susie’s knockdown], but as the Flemish loop is the easiest for me as a manufacturer to change, I am happy that we no longer utilise Flemish loops on the leader sections.’
Istvan kopar
tradewind 35
Cutter, Puffin
Previous solo circumnavigations: 1
Position in race: 4th, 264 days, 1 hour, 38 minutes.
More comfortable in storms than becalmed, Istvan Kopar tended to sail with his trysail and storm jib to ride out heavy weather. He also developed a ‘heave-to to go’ set up, where if his heading was good, he would centre the rudder with a slightly backing jib so he could still sail, but in a more cautious way. During the 11 or so 50-knot storms he experienced, Kopar never used warps and only used a drogue once but found retrieving it difficult, especially because of the amount of equipment on his transom, such as his windvane and hyrdogenerator. His frustration with his windvane is well documented online, although he didn’t want to comment on it during his interview with Yachting Monthly.
After a knockdown off Cape Agulhas, Kopar was unable to transmit on his radio and was only able to receive one channel. Occasionally he would talk to the crew of a commercial ship via VHF, although these were few and far between in the Roaring Forties and Furious Fifties. Like other race skippers, he found it was rare that shipping was responsive to his hailing.
Comparing the race with his previous circumnavigation in 1990-91 Kopar felt generally that the weather has become more unstable, and changed more frequently. ‘The storms didn’t last so long. In 1990-91 storms were 7-10 days long, this time they were 3-4 days, but the changes are frequent.’
UKU Randmaa
Rustler 36
masthead sloop, One and All
Previous solo circumnavigations: 1 Position in race: 3rd, 254 days, 18 hours, 40 minutes
Uku Randmaa’s most serious issue during the race was almost running out of food. He lost 20kg of bodyweight, surviving on a freeze-dried meal and a cup of soup per day for half of the race. He had just three packets of powdered soup left when he crossed the finish line.
‘There was no calculation at all when it came to the food,’ admitted Randmaa. ‘My problem was that I didn’t have enough carbohydrate, not enough pasta and rice. On the sea I am not a strong eater.
If I did physical work, I got tired early, but it was not a major problem.’