So what’s it really like?

by John Curnow on 6 Mar 2017 For ages now, well it seems like that anyway, these editorials have talked about multihull this, record that, outrageous boat speed and incredible 24-hour runs. In their own very unique way they totally represent the technical avant-garde, and thank God for that. Where would we be without their impressive shapes, wonderful rigs, and now of course, foiling magic.

To get an appreciation of just what it is like to be on board for a performance like this, we turned to master navigator, Miles Seddon. He is part of Lloyd Thornburg’s crew on the MOD70, Phaedo3, and we got him in between stints in the Caribbean on the green machine, and then Lionheart. Many thanks to him for the wonderful detail, and so check your PFD and PLB, then strap in for the ride of a lifetime!

Out of the box we got to learn that it is not all beer and skittles, when Seddon commented, “Unfortunately, I know all too well what it’s like to be in front and have to say sorry, we’ve just missed a mark. It was the 2016 Middle Sea Race with Phaedo and Lampasdusa. I felt pretty low about it for the rest of the race, but the owner was great in saying, ‘Come on, we’ve got to go back and sail the course!’ The other guys just took it on, gave me support on board, then gave me hell mercilessly afterwards. The support I got from other guys from the Volvo and AC was huge, I was fairly public about owning up, the Facebook video of me having to drink from my thong was viewed around seven thousand times.”

“As for sailing Phaedo3, I often liken it to driving a convertible sports car down a dirt track at 50mph in a torrential rain storm. The first time you bear away and the boat speed pushes beyond 30kn you’d better be holding on, the acceleration is huge. It’s like nothing else, RIBs cannot keep up. The AWA changes from 20 to 40, the AWS goes from 40kn to 20kn and the boat speed goes from 18–20, and on to 28–32 knots.”

“We’ve had periods some of the transatlantic races when we have kept 30 knot averages up for whole watch cycles. There have been 689nm 24hr periods, which is a 28.7 knot average! It’s not quite on pace with IDEC or Spindrift, but it’s not too bad for a much smaller, much lower freeboard craft. I think it was in the 2015 RORC Transat that we had four, 600nm+ days, back to back. There must only be a handful of sailors out there that have broken the 600nm barrier, so to do it day after day was pretty cool. 700 would be great, but that would need some pretty special conditions.”

“Those sorts of speeds mean life on board is pretty intense. We are quite shorthanded on board, having 6/7 offshore, and 8/9 inshore, so on the long races, we all trim and drive. Sitting in the pod on deck, waiting to drive for your first night watch during any of the voyages is nerve wracking. You spend the last five minutes of your standby watching the averages; TWS, TWA, BSP, PERF%. You want to be safe, but fast.”

“Then it’s time to take the helm. It seems that the first night drive is always in 20kn wind at 90–120 TWA, which means no escape zone. Naturally, that just adds to the intensity. A quick hand over chat, step over the tiller, one slides out of the seat, the other slides in, BSP never below 30knots. You grip the tiller like it’s the only thing holding you on the boat.”

“Five minutes in, your numbers are steady. All you can see at night is the B&G displays. TWA rules your life, BSP and TWS are quick checks, but TWA is locked in! Your heart rate starts to settle from 140 back to a more normal 110. Sometimes that’s it, you’re in the zone for the 40mins or 60mins that you’re driving, foot in the hydraulic mainsheet release, and one hand on the traveller to dump it if needed. Other times, and it always seems to be on night one, there will be squalls, you’re having to bear away rapidly whilst easing the traveller down, as the BSP passes 36 knots!”

Seddon then added, “Personally, I never sleep well on my first off watch. We have two bunks for’ard, between the mast foot and pod, and one back aft. I lie there and get tossed around. The aft bunk is a nightmare to sleep in at any stage, especially downwind, because it’s so noisy and violent. The second sleep is much better, the noise is loud, but you get used to it.”

“It’s when the noise stops that you wake up instantly, because it means the centre hull is out of the water! Downwind it should be kept in, and upwind it should be just kissing the water. I’d say I have some of the best one hour sleeps ever, but also some of the worst three hour sleeps.”

“Life below is uncomfortable. We have the three bunks, one nav seat, and one bench seat by the galley, that has just the one jet boil, and that’s it. Oh yeah. And it’s wet. The whole boat is wet. Above 15TWS you get fire hosed on deck, so when you come down the hatch you are soaking. The kit never gets chance to dry out.”

“Even on a race to the Caribbean it’s wet, and 35+degrees down below. Personal hygiene becomes pretty important, just to get yourself to the finish line, as does eating. On the last Transat, which was a day slower than 2015, I was burning 4000-6000 calories per day.”

“So by day two you’re into the rhythm of life on board. The speed is normal, 20kn BSP feels slow. It’s still wet, the motion is still violent, but it’s normal. Yes I do get seasick. Seemingly not on the longer trips, but the Fastnet World Record, Round Ireland Race, and Monaco to Porto Cervo, all saw breakfast getting the better of me.”

“I’m pretty lucky in that it hits quickly, I have a yawn over the back, try desperately not to get hit by the spray back vortex, and I’m back to work. It’s certainly not made easy by having to stare at a computer screen for hours on end. There an amazing number of navigators that suffer, I suppose it’s an occupational hazard.”

“From a navigation point of view the traditional offshore races (400–600nm) are pretty easy to prepare for. They are like long coastal races on this boat. You have a set start time, and the race window is usually only 30–48 hours. So weather forecasting is usually pretty reliable, it’s more of a boat on boat race.”

“The longer oceanic races are more work, with planning what to do with weather systems, sea states etc. We like to keep the boat in less than 3m seas, as greater than this really slows us down. However, from my point of view it’s more interesting, especially with evolving weather systems, and the boat on boat scenarios.”

“Breaking records requires much more work up front. There’s studying historical weather patterns to determine likely weather windows, as well as daily weather downloads and analysis. As it gets closer there is the daily calls with Brian Thompson to review the weather window, the likelihood of beating the record, and importantly, when to call the crew in.”

“We’ve had a couple of last minute changes, the first World Record we did from Antigua to Newport was go until the night before, when a weather forecast changed from a moderate/intense low pressure, to a fast moving, very intense hurricane. We all flew home for a weekend, came back in on Monday, left on the next weather system and broke the record.”

On the subject of records, the North Sails 3Di ENDURANCE powered craft now holds eight, and Seddon said, “Lloyd’s enthusiasm for records is infectious. He loves it. It would be easy to sail the boat in a relaxed mode during a record, with just the clock to beat, but we push hard. I never though you could get a 70ft trimaran completely airborne, but we did exactly that leaving the Needles during the Cowes–Dinard record.”

MOD 70 Phaedo3 doing 35 knots during a World Record-breaking sail from Cowes to Dinard from Bill Springer on Vimeo.

“For me that was a very memorable event. We were heading upwind at 18kn for the first 30 minutes, then reaching across the English Channel for the next four hours. You couldn’t stand on board, everyone was crawling around, or hanging on, and grinding was done sitting on the deck. We averaged 28.7kn, for 4’48”. Given that the first 30 minutes was upwind, after the Needles the average was well over 30 knots. In the lee of the Channel Islands we were dodging rocks at the top of a 9m tide, doing 36kn in flat water. It was insane.”

“The recent RORC Caribbean 600 was a great race. Maserati had been slow in Malta, until my cock up, and then we’d beaten them by around 300nm in the transatlantic race. However, they really turned it around in the Caribbean. Contrary to the weather forecast of around 8–14 knots with a total shutdown, we spent most of the race in 12–18. They need 15 TWS to foil, and there were plenty of periods where we had opened up a lead, only to see them come charging back, being four knots faster than us!”

“Any kind of lead on a short course disappears quickly when a boat is that much faster. It all came down to the last two legs. The first of them was Barbuda to Redonda, which was on the Starboard and for them their foiling gybe. Next was Redonda to the finish, and that would be on the Port gybe, which was slower for them. We had a 3nm lead at Barbuda, with 46nm to go, so we had to push hard as we knew they would be foiling.”

“I think by Redonda we had lost 1nm, and we were confident that we could maintain a 2nm gap on the last leg. As we approached the finish the wind lightened significantly, and I could see them on AIS still doing 28 knots. We were confident it was a going to happen to them as well, but you never know. Thankfully the wind softened for them too, and we crossed the line first about 13 minutes ahead.”

There has to be a reward, and Seddon closes by explaining, “Docking back into Antigua after the 600 is insane. It’s the third time we’ve taken Line Honours, and there must have been over 200 people waiting at the dock and cheering. The whole harbour follows the race, its massive, and it just so happens we seem to dock in when there is a massive party going on at one of the bars. So it would seem there is a readymade atmosphere that you don’t get at any other race, other than the VOR or Vendée.”

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