Debriefing leg two of the Atlantic Cup with Gonzalo Botin of Tales II

by David Schmidt, Sail-World USA Editor on 10 Jun 2016 Distance racing can be a tough game. Make the right strategic and tactical decisions, and odds are good that you will be rewarded on the results page; blow these, and odds are good that you’ll be doing a lot of clapping at the awards ceremony. For most sailors, experience and some local wisdom are the keys to unlocking the right racecourse decisions. Because of this, many sailors and teams take several cracks at a particular racecourse before they are really able to shine. Therefore, it’s a special moment when a team arrives at an event that they haven’t previously raced and cleans house.

Gonzalo Botin and Pablo Santurde both hail from Santander, Spain, where they have been actively racing on the Class 40 circuit aboard Botin’s Class 40, Tales II, a boat that’s no stranger to transatlantic racing and offshore miles. The pair teamed-up for this year’s Atlantic Cup, a three-stage Class 40 event that takes sailors from Charleston, South Carolina up to Portland, Maine—with a pit stop in Brooklyn, New York—where they switch gears and engage in a day of inshore racing on Saturday, June 11. While Botin or Santurde are both Atlantic Cup first-timers, this didn’t stop the Spanish-flagged team from taking bullets in both of the offshore legs.

I caught up with Botin to learn more about their race’s second stage, and about their impressions of American Class 40 racing.

Have you sailed in the U.S. before?
Actually, no. The only time I’ve ever sailed in the U.S. was a long time ago, I did a transatlantic race from New York. So we actually just took off from New York, and that was it. That’s the only time [I’ve sailed in U.S. waters].

Tell me a little bit about leg two—what were the highlights of sailing from Brooklyn up to Portland, Maine?
Well, [in] the beginning, we had to go down the Hudson [River], so the tide was with us, which makes things much easier, and we had enough wind to get down all the way before the change of the tide. So that was pretty straightforward compared to coming into New York, which was really a nightmare on the first leg!

After that, all the way to Cape Cod, we were supposed to make that in one tack, actually turned out we had to put on one tack. That meant that after the first night, which was very light and foggy, we ended up to windward of the rest of the boats, which gave us a very good advantage at that stage.

We were looking to stay to the right of the other boats, but actually things turned out perfect for us. We got to the waypoint in Cape Cod in front and that’s a very big advantage because after that you’re sailing downwind, so one-hour difference translates seven miles into 15 miles, if you see what I mean? So we were, I would say, a bit lucky, but we were also looking [to stay towards] the right, we were lucky but we were looking for it, I think we were in the right place.

I think after that everything was more straightforward, although we did have some heavy weather going past Boston. We had a squally 30 knots. We blew our A6 spinnaker, which was quite spectacular. It was difficult to retrieve all the bits and pieces. But we didn’t really need that sail afterwards, we were lucky, because afterwards we were okay with our A5, which is the smaller sail and we did all right.

Did you have to deal with any of Maine’s famous fog?
Yes. There was a lot of fog and we had to deal with a lot of patches of fog. And sailors, we don’t like fog, fog at sea is a very difficult situation because you don’t see much and you’re going very fast. Fog is one of the big issues in this area at this time of the year.

What were the biggest challenges for you guys on the second leg?
I would say [it was] the moment we blew a spinnaker [up] because we made a big mess, the whole thing got tied around the [head]stay. We had to bring it down. It wouldn’t come down. It was blowing very, very strong. We had another piece [of sailcloth] that was trailing from the back of the boat. So, it took us about an hour to get the whole mess sorted and get going again.

We thought the other guys were catching up but they were not because they had a very light patch which we didn’t experience and they were going slowly so actually, we were all right. I would say that the richer got richer. The guys who were in front got better conditions than the guys who were behind, and that’s why we actually took off.

Nice when that happens! Can you compare the first leg with the second leg?
It’s been two hard legs because on the first leg we came out of Charleston on the edge of a tropical storm. The first night was rough, very rough, and well, a bit less rough than we expected, we expected it to be even rougher, but we were lucky that the wind shift came before we [got] to the Gulf Stream. So we were actually working inside of the current. [Otherwise, we] would have had to tack [through] the current…then we would have had to cross [some] very, very difficult seas. [Fortunately,] we didn’t have to. We were lucky there. You see what I mean? The shift was before the current so we didn’t actually get there so we didn’t experience the worst conditions.

If I compare that [experience] to this [second] leg, I think [the first] leg, especially the very last part going up the [Hudson River] to the finish line, was very, very complicated. We had very little wind, at one point we were going backwards, we had our anchor ready so that we could anchor. We were going down on a cargo [ship] that was anchored. We had some really, really difficult times going up the Hudson to New York.

So I think both legs have been quite hard…not easy legs, definitely not.

You’ve sailed the boat in Europe quite a lot, no?
Actually the boat has sailed, from 2103 to now, [she has] sailed around 60,000 miles, which is one and half [times] around the world, more or less. That means the boat has been, every year, in Europe, until November or December, then the boat has gone to America, Brazil, and also to the Caribbean. Then we do the races in the Caribbean in the winter.

[After this,] the boat goes back to Europe and then the boat comes back next year in another [transatlantic race]. The boat has done [six transatlantic races] already in three years.

How competitive is the Atlantic Cup compared to some of the other Class 40 racing that you’ve done in other places?
I think it’s very competitive. The class is young in America. I think there’s a lot of interest and there are already quite a few boats. Most of the boats are European boats but there [are starting to be] American boats [as well]…which I think is very good for the class. If America is interested in the class, then we have a great future if the thing works here, definitely. And I think the fleet is very competitive. Maybe we would need more boats in order to compare with the big events.

How difficult will it be for you guys to transition to inshore racing for the last phase of the Atlantic Cup after the offshore sailing you’ve been doing?
We have a good team for the inshore [races]. We have two guys that have been part of the project since the start, they have come down to race the inshore [races]. And we are very ready for that, too. We like inshore racing very much.

I think these boats are ideal in that they can do a lot of offshore racing and they are also good for inshore. It’s an excellent class and the boats are really good. They’re not very expensive, [and] they’re very fast. They’re very seaworthy and it allows owners like myself to run a project without going into ridiculous amounts of money.