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• It was long and we learned lots, Artemis duo sail in to tenth

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The 28/11/2009

It was long and we learned lots, Artemis duo sail in to tenth

A difficult race for Sam Davies and Sidney Gavignet on a powerful boat which has still got to be proved, but they say they have few regrets, and certainly not taking the southern route.

Out of another squally, difficult evening peppered by torrential heavy tropical rain showers, Sam Davies and Sidney Gavignet brought Artemis across the finish line to complete their Transat Jacques Vabre in tenth place.

Davies said she and Gavignet have no regrets at all about their strategic choice to go south, a choice which cost them any chance of a top result. She simply said they did not know the boat well enough to venture towards the northern routing.

She said there were small things which cost them, making one small choice to tack south too late saw them lose miles to Akéna Vérandas.

Otherwise it was the wearying battles with technical failures which ground them down and contributed to lost miles and small mistakes.

Nevertheless the hugely talented duo sailed a solid race, showing great drive, spirit and good humour even when the odds had long since stacked up against them.

Davies and Gavignet in fact made a strong start to their race on Artemis and came out of the English Channel is fourth place.

While Foncia immediately peeled south quickest, even a little east, Artemis were less extreme, sailing a southern routing with Akéna Vérandas, and tacking west again at the same time as Foncia. But even then Gavignet was warning that their southerly option was showing them emerging with an immediate deficit of 300 miles to the boats to the north.

And not only was he right, but the margin continued to grow.

In the big storm they lost a batten from the main, lost the anchor point for the third reef, more sail damage, and cracked the coachroof, as well as rendering their main iridium phone unusable.

So compromised were they at the time, that they seriously considered a pit-stop, but decided it would cost them too much time. It was clear that the time which it took them to repair and re-group, more than 24 hours of hard work, was to cost them dearly.  

The Azores high was not kind to the Artemis duo, they were slowed as they negotiated the southern side, lying in 10th place. It was the classic rich get richer scenario and there was little Gavignet and Davies could do.

Virtually since the latitude of the Canary Islands, Artemis have been trying to close miles but to little avail. The effects of the high kept them gripped.

At one stage they were hopeful that they might catch 1876 who were suffering from the opposite side of the high.

It took them longer to reach the trade winds, but when they broke through they enjoyed fast sailing and through the final days, and from 200 miles behind Akéna Vérandas they were within 112 on the final ranking Friday, and 86 miles shy of 1876 who took ninth.

Sidney Gavignet, FRA, Artemis: “I am very happy we made it. That was the first goal. The second goal was performance and this time it was not so good. But that is sport, you can’t win all the time and so we need a last in a race and this time it is us. But we learned a lot and a lot about the boat and hopefully we can make some improvements.”

Sam Davies, GBR, Artemis: It was long and it was hard. It was a good race in lots of ways because some of the sailing was fantastic, but some of it was hard and frustrating. We had lots of technical repairs to make and so we could not concentrate on the tactics and the sailing because we were just so physically tired from having our heads in the toolbox all the time with the other person helming, it was difficult.”

 “ I was lucky to sail with someone who is so experienced, but also so patient and kind, and has a great sense of humour. When it is not going well, that is when it is hard on the relationship with just two people on board, but this was the opposite. We always had a good team spirit and that kept us motivated.”

“ I would not have gone north with this boat. No regrets there at all, especially when you see that one boat pretty much sank. That really confirms it for me, maybe if I had been in Roxy, I would have because I knew the boat, but no way with this boat, with the time we had had. We did not even know the boat at all. We had never sailed with three reefs and when we did we discovered we needed four. And just a whole load of things which we could not take the risk of going somewhere there was no escape if things had gone bad. I definitely have no regrets there at all.”

“ One thing is that when we tacked south we actually hesitated a little bit, when I realised when we had to go south, we had so little time and when we did tack, we actually had to cross just a little undulation on the front and that meant we gave up some miles to Akéna Vérandas and W-Hotels. That was a stupid, stupid mistake which we could easily have done without, but that is the only one I really regret. We made a few tactical mistakes but that was because we were so knackered from repairing stuff that you just cant actually concentrate.”

“ The boat is a whole lot more physical but it is double handed, and with Sidney is really strong and so it was OK. It was kind of as I expected. But comfort wise, compared to Roxy, there is no comfort. And this race is not a comfortable race, even when we were going downwind. It was pretty hard.”

“ It is an interesting course and when you see all the routes spread out, there are so many options. I don’t really count the boats which went north. For me I would have been happy to be into the six boats which finished just in front of us, they were close. I think we could have if we did not have had our mainsail problems.”

“ It was a bit frustrating coming in, we were just so knackered. Last night we had an easy gybe in 15-20 knots and wrapped the spinnaker round in itself, and that is something I have never done myself, that was just a sign of how tired we were. We had to drop it and put a gennaker up.”

“ I think the boat has potential. There is no way it is my boat. There is no way I would ever take this boat to race solo. I would rather not do the race. I just know I would not do me, or the boat justice. The times we could have been sailing to the real strengths of the boat, going upwind, all the reef points blew out of the boom one by one and so you had to keep taking in reef after reef. There were carbon splinters everywhere and we thought we had split the boom. Upwind and close reaching I do think this boat could be a weapon, but we did not get a chance to. We were hindered by the lack of time and preparation and not having hardly spares because we had taken so much weight out of the boat and she is a heavy boat. We should have gone as normal. We had not really been out pushing on the ocean before so we really should have had the spares and equipment to deal with what was happening.”

“ For me this race was all part of the run up to the next Vendée Globe and so for me the result is one bit, but it is an amazing result in terms of what I have learned. It is the hard stuff which makes you stronger. And I am sure that the next racing, then the performance will just shoot up. That is the overall victory for me.”

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