The Register Citizen (Torrington, CT)
JEFF JACOBS
Father and son set sail in race around the world
He couldn’t help himself. Victor Ansart had flown to Punta del Este, Uruguay, to visit his dad after the first leg of the 2017-18 Clipper Round the World Yacht Race, and before he knew it he had signed on for its fifth and sixth legs.
Leg 6 is the North Pacific Stage, from Qinqdao, China, to Seattle. At 5,528 nautical miles and points where the closest humans are the astronauts on the International Space Station, it is known as the Big One.
And if you think 27 days together, savoring the beauty and battling wicked conditions across the Pacific, taxed a relationship between an Old Greenwich dad and his son, well, you don’t know Benoit and Victor Ansart.
And the great draw of the sea.
Benoit, who moved from France in the 1980s at age 32, started sailing as the youngest of seven children. He learned from his older brothers on the family’s wooden dinghy vacationing in Brittany. He advanced to small cruising boats on the English Channel.
The Clipper Round the World Yacht Race — conceived in 1995 by Sir Robin Knox-Johnston, the first person to sail solo nonstop around the world — is the ultimate adventure. After undergoing training, there is room for novices — 40 percent have no sailing experience — and seasoned sailors alike. The Ansarts, who belong to Old Greenwich and Riverside Yacht Clubs, fit the latter description.
Benoit sailed on a transatlantic delivery in
2005. He loved it. He also knows fewer sailors have circumnavigated the globe than mountaineers have climbed Mount Everest.
“After Victor finished college and I had achieved my career goals, I decided to do more off-shore sailing,” Benoit emailed from aboard the Sanya Serenity Coast. “I signed up for the Clipper Race, but it had to be for the round the world. This was on the top of my bucket list!”
There are eight legs, starting in August with Liverpool, England, to Punta Este. From there it is was on to South Africa to Australia to China and Seattle. The seventh leg goes through the Panama Canal to New York. The boats are currently off the coast of Mexico. The last leg leaves New York and is scheduled to finish in Liverpool on July 28.
Victor, 26, graduated from Greenwich High and Tufts and is an electrical engineer. He hadn’t planned on the race, but the small tech startup he was working for ran into financial problems. In Uruguay, on the last day, after hanging out with the crew, he couldn’t resist joining. Competitors can sail in individual legs.
“You could see it in my dad’s face when I got to Australia for Leg 5,” Victor said. “He was ecstatic.”
“There are no downs but only ups when I sail with my son,” Benoit said.
Leg 5 for the fleet of 11 went from Airlie Beach, Australia, to Sanya, China, and onto Qingdao.
“There was some insufferable heat, 115 degrees on deck, over 100 below deck,” Victor said. “There was no escaping it. Everyone gets dehydrated, so we drink tons of water and (take) lots of salt hydration pills.”
Still, Leg 6 is the ultimate challenge, the ultimate reward. At one point, gusts hit 80 knots. The waves reached the height of a four-story building.
“During the storm, it was absolutely spectacular,” Victor said. “When you’re at the top of these massive waves, they look like mountains all around you. The wave tops are white from the breaking water. So it looks like snow and this beautiful mountain vista. When you got to the top, the boats would just fly down at super speeds, hitting more than 30 knots.”
The 70-foot monohulls weigh more than 30 tons. The Sanya Serenity Coast has a crew of 21. The competitors come from 40 countries and all walks of life. Benoit, 57, works in the power industry.
Yes, there are some dangers. The first two deaths of the 21-year biennial event occurred in the 2015-16 race, and there has been one in this race.
“We had hurricane wind conditions and waves of 30 to 40 feet high on Leg 6,” said Benoit, who often has been at the helm. “Surfing those waves at nighttime was scary, but also the most exciting thing I have done on a sailboat. At all times during the race I felt that we were safe and in control of the situation.”
On Leg 5, father and son were on different watches. On Leg 6, they were on the same.
“We were together all the time,” Victor said. “We get along really well. We’ve had a blast. He gave me advice on some things. It was really nice.” You want to hear nice? “As we zoom through these waves, there’s this big bow wave projected off to the side,” Victor said. “As the water is thrown off the boat, it changes colors all around you, a mixture of white and turquoise. You can hear the boat humming from the speed. What a sensation. It feels as if it is unleashed and flying.
“The sea is filled with phosphorus plankton. So at night, they look like a shower of green sparks splashing on the deck. It’s mesmerizing.”
And then there are the albatross.
“They’d hover about 30 to 50 feet above the water, swoop down within inches of the waves and then shoot up into the air. It was majestic. We had one family follow us for five days. At night, you wouldn’t see them. In the morning, they’d suddenly appear and fly around the boat. We didn’t know how they found us.”
At one point during Leg 6, it took the Sanya Serenity Coast more than a week to go 700 miles. Usually, it does 250 miles in a day. Reason? A dreaded wind hole. Before getting into Seattle, the crew hit another.
“One watch we were in second, I woke up and within four hours we were seventh,” Victor said. “The day before we had almost a 100-mile lead on everyone else. That was crushing. But four hours later we were second. I was incredibly happy.”
The Sanya Serenity Coast finished second in Leg 6 and holds on to the overall lead.
“It will be a battle to the end,” Victor said.
It turns out Victor will be there. Benoit saw how much Victor was enjoying the race and he offered to pay for another leg. Victor got to the race office in Qingdao and signed on.
“It was a dream of a lifetime to race around the world but to share part of it with my son is amazing,” Benoit said. “This is beyond a father and son relationship, it is a partnership of working together with a common goal … a common dream we have to cross oceans together. This is some of the best time with him in my life.”