Leg 0 - Challenges for Team Malizia before the start of The Ocean Race
by Will Harris 4 Jan 2023 18:39 HKT
3 January 2023
Life in the cockpit of Malizia-Seaexplorer - you can control everything and check the charts from one place © Team Malizia
As we come into the new year, in only two weeks time we'll be crossing the start line of leg one of The Ocean Race. Over the next six months we will be racing over 30,000 miles and will complete a lap of the planet, something that's quite hard to comprehend when we haven't even started yet. For now, we're doing our final preparations getting the food, equipment and boat ready as well as preparing ourselves mentally for the challenges ahead.
The biggest bit of training we've managed to do before the start is to sail the boat back from Guadeloupe to Alicante after the finish of the Route du Rhum. It was the first long distance test for the boat while sailing with a crew of five on board, the same as the configuration for the Ocean Race.
It's amazing how much we learned about the boat, we've been able to apply this the last few weeks while the technical team has been working through the jobs list. But also, on a performance side we could see how we were able to push the boat with a crew on board. It's going to be an interesting race and it feels like the teams will learn more about how to sail the boat and how the crew can work together as the race goes on. Leg 1 results could look very different to Leg 7...
Although the first week of the trip was banging upwind, which is extremely uncomfortable on the IMOCA and can literally drive you insane with the constant slamming of the hull into the waves. We found a nice depression for the second half of the trip which gave us a real 'Southern Ocean' test for the boat. 35 knots of wind and up to six metre waves downwind sailing allowed us to really stretch her legs and see how our more radical hull shape and scow bow was able to skim over the waves much easier.
Life onboard seems to be ok for a crew. Living in a 3 by 3 metre box that is shaking around with four other people is going to be challenging, especially after 30 days at sea. However, the crew all got on fine and we all agreed at the end that we will be ok in each others' company for the next six months! Probably the most important piece of equipment to remember for the race is a good set of noise cancelling headphones since the noise can sometimes be deafening when you are trying to sleep.
One huge challenge we are having to overcome is upon arrival to Alicante in Mid-December, we found upon scanning the foils that the internal structure was badly damaged. It has made them unusable without a long extensive repair. Foils for IMOCAs usually take around 6 months to build, a long laborious task requiring many steps of laying up carbon. Which has meant building a new pair in time for the start was out of the question.
At one point it was looking devastating for our Ocean Race plans since taking part in the race without a working set of foils would make us completely uncompetitive. But, through both an amazing effort from the design team and a bit of luck an alternative pre-built set of foils were found. They roughly fit the casings in Malizia-Seaexplorer mean only minor modifications have had to be made.
We are not completely out the clear yet. We will only have a few short days to test the foils before the start of Leg 1 and we must really hope there are no major issues. The new foils are also a different shape to our previous pair and will therefore require different settings to find the best speeds so we will have a steep learning curve during the first leg.
It's a big challenge, but we're feeling confident and in the meantime we are preparing everything else for the race. A typical day will look something like this:
- 7:00-8:00 - Gym /Stretching session
- 08:00 - Team daily meeting at the team base
- 9:00 - 12:00 - Weather and roadbooks planning for each Leg
- 12:00 - 13:00 - Team Lunch at the base with the whole team
- 13:00 - 18:30 - Sailing or Team Base for: Packing/preparing food, spares, clothing and sails
- 18:30 - 20:00 - Team Dinner at the base debriefing daily topics with Tech team
- 20:00 - Home
The more that we prepare before the start of each leg the less we will have to manage during racing, which means you can spend more time focusing on performance. For example, the food we will pack into individual day bags for each sailor. They will each get a three meals as well as an assortment of snacks that they have chosen and are expected to eat in a day to maintain the amount of calories burnt while sailing. By packing it so methodically it saves the time finding the food for each day.
During the racing we are also not allowed any assistance with weather while racing. So, we've been taking some time to brush up on our weather notes for the route. Identifying where will be the key features to make important strategical decisions. We put these together into a roadbook for each leg that also contains information on safety e.g ports that we can stop at if needed.
After some time off over Christmas and the new year, our whole sailing team is refreshed and ready for what lies ahead in the next few months. It's the longest race in the world so we shouldn't forget that it's not over until we cross the finish line of the final leg in Genoa.
www.theoceanrace.com