Nathan Baron - Sailing towards Mini Transat

by Canadian Yachting Association on 6 May 2011 Wind Athletes Manager John Curtis had the opportunity to sail in a double handed race with Nathan Baron, who is one of two Canadians attempting to qualify for the Mini Transat this year. (solo race from France to Brazil in 21 ft boat). Curtis blogs about his adventures below.

Nathan completed the 1000 nm qualification sail last year (circumnavigation of the Bahamas) and is now in Europe for a month to complete the 1000 nm of racing he needs to do to qualify for the actual Mini Transat ( France to Brazil with a stop over in Mediros)

Some of the qualifying mile races can be done double handed. Curtis flew to France to do a 155 nm double handed race on Easter weekend.

The start was delayed 3 hours but in such a long race it did not make much difference. The race was scheduled to be 155 nm but was shortened to 125 due to the late start and lighter winds. By 3 pm it had picked up to about 18 knots and then died about 8 pm with various thunderstorms rolling through. Fortunately for Nathan he still gets to count this race as 155 qualifying race miles out of the 1000 he requires.

'We had poor boat speed', John Curtis explains. He goes on to say 'I believe it was due to the fact that our sails were undersized compared to the others. I am guessing that the main is about 150 sq ft smaller. We also were not able to use the genoa because it does not set well with the lead positions and it is quite shot. We decided to go with a smaller Solent as the foresail which hurt us upwind when the wind was under 8 knots. The largest spinnaker is also about 200 sq ft smaller than average. There is no limit on spinnaker size and most of the other boats had spinnakers that were 3-4 feet longer on the foot. This meant that in the light air VMG running we were not able to sail as low and fast as the others and this also hurt our positioning. Reaching was okay with this sail. The reason he has such small sails is just inexperience. Most of the sails came with the boat and some were ok like the two spinnakers, but they were small. The Code 0 is tired but worked well. The genoa was just terribly blown out and too long on the foot to fit the jib tracks which were apparently added after the sail was built because the floating lead system did not work as planned. The Genoa needs to be replaced. Nathan is going to see if he can find some decent used sails to replace the Main and Genoa and find a bigger kite here in France. This is a shoe string program but he is keen to improve his performance.'

'The wind was quite squirrely with all the thunderstorms and we were about to nearly pass about 15 boats early in the night. Coming from a first mark rounding of dead last. We positioned ourselves close to one of the storms and at one point were the only boat moving. We passed a large group to leeward of us but as the wind settled in our speed was just not enough to hold them. We ended up 64/74 but only an hour or so behind the bulk of the fleet. Nathan is looking into the possibility of finding some used sails that will improve the speed. About 1/2 the fleet were Prototype boats with asymmetrical dagger boards and kanting keels, taller masts and all sorts of go fast stuff. They look more like a shrunk down open 60 than anything. We were not really racing them so our overall finish was probably not that bad if you only count the regular 'series' boats and considering the problems with sails. ( series boats are low teck production boats with 10 or more hulls built). I have not been able to find the results with the positions split into two separate fleets - probably my French is lacking.

The race finished in Pornichet (south west of Lorient). Nice little town with a great harbor and beautiful beaches mixed with rugged coast line.

There was some drama during the night. A boat that went up on the rocks, tore the keel off and holed the boat. No one was injured. Apparently the keel is still on the rocks. It was quite windy at night and the swell was large enough that mast head lights of the boats around us disappeared when we were in the trough of the wave, so it must have been frightening for the guys who went up on the rocks. It was amazing that the coast guard rescued them and the boat. We saw the rescue helicopter flying around with search lights on and knew it was one of the Mini's because we heard them talking about it on the VHF. Apparently there were two boats on the ricks but I only saw one back in Lorient.

It was great fun even though we would have liked to do better. It was exciting racing all the way around. Even at night we were close to other boats, thinking tactically and strategically and trying to squeeze every ounce of boat speed we could out of the boat. My role was to be Auto (Nathan's name for his auto pilot) and Nathan was playing himself. This meant Nathan was pretty tired after about 25 sail changes and one trip up the mast to fetch a spinnaker halyard.

The boat runs well and Nathan was extremely well organized. He looked after all the navigation and clearly has a firm handle on all the necessary seamanship skills. I know I learned many things from him this weekend. It seems to me that all his hard work and preparation is coming together. Nathon's dream of qualifying and racing the Mini Transat this summer is very close to becoming reality . The really neat thing is he is now more focused on doing well than just doing it. A nice place to be for Nathan and an exciting process to watch unfold.'

Next week Nathan does a 300 mile event, but this one is single handed. He will spend the week getting ready for that. He is looking for a crew for the Mini Fastnet Race in early June.