Archive for December, 2008
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Jonny (& Steve, & Dee) hit the local press as year ends
Piece mentioning Jonny, Steve and Dee in “afloatweymouth” today:
Gruelling start to the New Year for sailors, by Laura Kitching.
Charlton Down sailor Steve White aboard his Open 60 yacht Toe in the Water is more than 50 days into the Vendee Globe race. NEW Year’s Eve will be a solitary affair for ocean racing skippers Steve White and Jonny Malbon.
The solo sailors have endured ice cold rain and massive waves aboard their 60-foot yachts in the hostile Southern Ocean this Christmas.
They are competing against each other and 13 other skippers in the Vendee Globe non-stop around-the-world race.
The gruelling 24,840-mile race has already seen 15 yachtsmen forced to retire.
New Year’s Day will mark 52 days at sea for father-of-four Steve, of Charlton Down, and former Weymouth schoolboy Jonny.
Steve, 35, said: “It will be an unusual New Year for me to say the least.
“For a start (my wife) Kim and I will be apart, but also I will be in the Pacific Ocean, somewhere to the east of New Zealand amongst the albatross and the big grey rollers, the memories of which will stay forever.
“I’ll be looking forward to crossing an ocean that I hope will be kinder to us than the Indian Ocean has been, and of course to rounding that most famous landmark of all for sailors, Cape Horn.
Former Weymouth schoolboy Jonny Malbon. Credit: Lloyd Images “This will mark the beginning of the sprint home back up the Atlantic in the sunshine to the finish in what will be by then a tired boat.”
Steve, who remortgaged his family home four times in a stressful sponsorship search before a last-minute backer secured his place on the French start line, said it had been a rollercoaster year’ for his whole family.
He added: “Now, living out my dream and staying in the race I hope until the end, all the heartache seems like a distant memory.
“Out of 30 starters comprising the top solo sailors in the world we are placed 12th, and have just received the Seahorse Sailor of the Month Award.
“It is difficult to see how life could be better.”
Steve said his return to Les Sable d’Olonne in France in February would be a turning point for us all and the end of a 10-year struggle’.
He hoped it would also boost his ocean racing campaign and added: “Whatever happens, I will be spending more time with the family.”
His wife Kim said it was her first New Year’s Eve without Steve.
She added: “We will all be raising a glass to him - we are very proud.”
Jonny, 34, is currently one place behind White and two places behind former Swanage PE teacher Dee Caffari.
He received festive support from his father, Sir Fabian Malbon, and family who left presents aboard his boat and Christmas wishes from sailing legend Sir Robin Knox-Johnston.
Remaining optimistic despite the gruelling conditions, Jonny said: “We are still out here on the race course, still making progress, and still part of the event - long may it continue.”
4:29pm Tuesday 30th December 2008
Day 53Dec 31st, 2008
by Ben Malbon -
Day 51 - Jonny’s post to The Daily Sail
Just about south of Tasmania, Jonny, Rich Wilson and Derek Hatfield have been coping with consecutive, vicious and deep depression as they fight their way across the Southern Ocean south of Australia. Ferocious seas and dangerous squalls knocked them about, and yesterday Derek had to abandon the Race after a serious knockdown, which saw him standing on the deckhead of ALGIMOUS, resulted in two broken spreaders on the port side and put the integrity of the mast in jeopardy. He decided that there was no way he could repair the spreaders well enough to take on another 4000 miles of ocean between New Zealand and Cape Horn, and so is making his way carefully north to Hobart, praying that the mast will last the course. What a sad and cruel end to an inspiring campaign. The sea has no compassion, no friends or enemies, just victims.
Rich Wilson is sore after cuts and bruises sustained during his knockdowns, and the two surviving members of this elite, if battered club, are missing ALGIMOUS. The three have been very much a team over the last weeks, racing but keeping in touch to let each other know what was in store and sharing the apprehension and anxiety.
Jonny posted a good interview yesterday with The Daily Sail, a site which should be in every sailor’s Bookmarks - reasonably priced and incredibly informative.
Deep in the Southern Ocean, Artemis Ocean Racing skipper Jonny Malbon had just been on Sky News when we spoke to him recently and the news had finally sunk that he was missing Christmas with friends and family.
“I got to watch some TV but the worst thing was that they had lots of Christmas adverts with big fat turkeys on them. Its just rammed it home. It’s horrible…”
With this Vendee Globe approaching devastation levels not seen in the last two races, with only 50% of the fleet that started actively racing now, so Malbon admits that the pummelling he has received from the relentless depressions are wearing him a bit thin.
“Certainly towards the back we’ve had more than our fair share. They are thick and fast and horrible,” he says, comparing it to when he went around with Brian Thompson on the Oryx Quest when they pretty much stayed with one system all the way through the Southern Ocean. “This time round we are just getting rolled by lots of them and it’s getting a bit dull now. We’ve had three lots of 60 knots and tonight it is a solid 30-40 and there is a nice big one brewing which I think we’ll be out of the way of, but if you look at the forecast its saying 80 knot gusts and none of that sounds that nice to me. So hopefully the Pacific will be a bit kinder.”
To date Malbon says the top wind speed he has seen has been 64 knots in big Southern Ocean depression no.2, but despite having less wind the last one, he says, was nastier because of the hideous sea state. “The sea state has been getting progressively worse and it means you have to slow down which is a real killer because you just want to get out of it as quickly as possible. There is a huge confused cross sea and it is quite frightening because the waves are strong enough to spin your boat, so to be quite honest I’m not enjoying that side of it.”
A fine raconteur, Malbon says that so far scary moment number one was the broach followed by a crash gybe he experienced a couple of weeks ago, which incredibly, he emerged from unscathed…
“We have to wind a lot of vang on to pull the mainsail off the rig and if you are in the wrong set of waves, that are trying to turn the bow to weather, sometimes the pilot, try as it might, just can’t cope with the acceleration. So I was down below and we went down a particularly big wave with a gust as well and I basically threw myself through the hatch as we were hitting 29 knots. I got to the wheel – I didn’t have a jacket on or anything, I’d just shaken a reef out – I’d taken about 40 minutes to decide whether it was too windy or not! And then it was… So I got to the wheel and the cockpit is completely underwater and I am completely underwater as we broach. I was on my hands and knees spinning the wheel, trying to get her to bear away at which point we accelerate massively and crash gybed under main and jib top, but luckily we were going so fast that there was very little apparent in the sails and I managed to turn the wheel back and they both popped back over and we were back off at 20 knots! So I instantly put the reef back in and then had a chuckle to myself. But it was pretty scary. You think about the repercussions and how you might deal with that on your own – it is pretty mental…”
Scary moment number two was his iceberg encounter. “That was pretty bad. It was the first time I’d seen an iceberg. There was a huge squall and the radar was blacked out and as the squall cleared there was a blip on the radar screen and it looked very much like a ship. So I went up on deck and couldn’t see anything and went back down and it was getting bigger and closer and then I went back up and out of the remains of the squall, this bloody great chunk of ice comes out - - it was probably half a mile long and 80m tall. I was four miles away, but it was big. It was amazing, but quite sobering when you suddenly see that drifting around. And the satellite hadn’t seen it despite it being a fairly sizable chunk of gear. I was to leeward of it so I bore away as hard as possible because in the squall you get lifted and headed all the time and I wanted to stay as far away from that as possible.”
Aside from these tales of daring do, Malbon admits he is sailing a very conservative race. We ask him how the boats dropping out of the race has affected him and he says this vindicates his approach. “It has affected me in as much as it has made me continue to sail the way I’ve been sailing. I can push the boat harder, but I know that it will lead to problems. I know that I’m not as fast as I should be and I certainly don’t feel competitive at the moment, but all these incidents that happen push me up the leaderboard. I am in 14th at the moment and if I can get around and be in that position when I finish that would it would be absolutely insane. I think anyone in their right mind would have laughed at me if I’d said I’d been in that position prior to the start. But there is obviously a hell of a long way to go. There is so much experience and so much time and effort and the guys with so much time on their boats having problems – it does make you be ultra cautious.”
He has not been without his own problems. Artemis has suffered some superficial damage to her mainsail – for some reason the scrim has blistered off on one side leaving the fibres exposed, forcing Malbon to take extra care when reefing or unreefing.
The only race threatening breakage so far has been the PUR Survivor watermakers. “I spent about two days in total trying to fix it. I got down to the point where I had three litres of water left and I was starting to get quite desperate for a solution. We tried plumbing into the ballast tanks, taking feeds from all sorts of places. Now I have got it working just straight from the feed direct to the pump, so it is not going through any filters or anything but it is producing lovely water.” Malbon had just produced 10 litres of H2O, but says he doesn’t know what the problem was, only that both watermakers packed up when he arrived in the south.
One of Artemis’ many features is her interceptor. Unlike the Owen Clarke boats like Ecover and Aviva, this is fitted on to the transom, fortunate as it has become stuck. Malbon can still move it, but it involves him hanging off the transom. “Quite often I find myself hanging off the back of the boat in 30-60 knots pulling the trim tab back up a bit because it changes the attitude of the boat dramatically when you are surfing downwind.” With the interceptor down it causes the boat to nosedive when the breeze is up.
Other than that the mast rotation controls have broken a few times and the traveller sustained some damage shortly after the start, but has got no worse. “That happened in a crash tack as that vicious front came through it looped around one of the traveller stand up blocks and gave it a bit of a nudge. But we are 40 days on now. I am keeping my eye on it. Its cracked and the laminate is damaged, but it doesn’t seem to be moving.”
Artemis’ giant wingmast also seems to be surviving well (touch wood). “I have been sailing around in 60 knots with the main down and just the staysail up, doing 20 knots on the surfs and feeling relatively comfortable. The pilot has been able to control the boat. I won’t know until I try it, but I don’t think you’d want to go more than that. But in any boat when you are getting up to 60-70 knots, you are need in of bicycle clips anyway.”
As to lifestyle on board, Malbon says that his sleep pattern is erratic – he sleeps when he is exhausted or when conditions are stable such as in the warm sector between warm and cold fronts. “But I spend a lot of time sat looking at numbers and at the pilot from down below, with gear on ready to jump into action. And that is one of things I have got to learn not to do. I could spend eight hours just watching numbers and not sleeping when in theory I could have had eight hours sleep because nothing happened. But that is down to confidence, experience and time.”
Despite being as he describes it ‘overly vigilant’, he has had time to read a book and says he is not overly stressed or tired. “I haven’t been hallucinating this time or imagining things, which indicates I am not too tired.” While his sleep may be hapzard, he says he is religiously eating and drinking at the right times.
And the isolation? It is not often you get to spend a month and a half on your own. “Yesterday I got really down because I gybed again. The sea state was so crap on one gybe that I thought that ‘right when I gybe it has got to get better’. And when I gybed it was atrocious. So you are getting pooped, a quarter sea and slapped on the beam by massive breaking waves all from different directions, all about 6m high. And you download a wave model and it just shows you in a big pile of red horribleness which seems to stretch all the way to the Pacific. So yesterday I had a bit of a mood on in the morning, but when we stared moving again I was fine. I haven’t felt too isolated or too lonely yet and I hope I won’t now. When I get to the date line then in my mind I am on my way home and every mile I knock off is a mile closer.”
While he is enjoying the challenge of the Vendee Globe, Malbon admits that it is making him realise how much he also enjoys life at home in Cowes. He hopes that the next ice he sees will be that floating on the top of his rum and coke in the Pierview.
Another 1000 miles or so and Jonny will be half way round, so the rest will be all down hill! A huge number of people are rooting for him, so keep trucking, Jo!
Day 52Dec 30th, 2008
by Yachtmaddie -
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Day 51Dec 29th, 2008
by tim -
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Jonny apparently has a horse onboard… whatever
Day 51Dec 29th, 2008
by tim -
Day 50 - South of Tasmania
Let’s hope that Jonny and ARTEMIS can get some respite from the atrocious conditions that have dogged them, and the others in the group, passing below Australia. Rich Wilson and Jonny will soon pass in to the next phase of the Race through the Southern Ocean south of the Pacific where sea and wind may be kinder. They are both hungry to snap up some miles on their rivals, now that only 16 boats (probably) are still in contention.
Dereck Hatfield is sailing carefully towards Hobart with his wounded boat, and Rich Wilson wrote a moving blog to his North American colleague today on the Vendee site:
An inspiration to so many
“Despondent about Derek. After returning for repairs after the start, he had sailed brilliantly through the Atlantic, catching up many miles. He was relentless and had gained on our group of 2 (with Artemis) to make a group of 3. Brothers in arms through the last week of severe gales of 45-55knots each. Our group talked on the phone through these gales, and through Christmas. We were all in the same sea state that rolled Derek, so it could have happened to any of our 3, frightening. We will miss him from our little group. Derek’s project is one of the great ones in the Vendee Globe. Starting with no sponsor, no boat, he raised money via a group of 10,000 supporters that he gained one by one by relentless pr work, he built the boat by himself, an extraordinary feat, he made hundreds of corporate presentations to no sponsorship avail until the very end, almost too late to help, no big shore crew, and on and on. He is a great ambassador for the Vendee Globe to Canada and North America. He has so much to be proud of with his project, even if he won’t finish this race. Surely hundreds of thousands of people are inspired by his total effort, people whom he will never meet will change their lives because of him, and his retirement from the race does not dilute this impact one bit. Derek, I’m sure you’ll be disappointed and discouraged by not finishing this course, but be proud of your total effort, be proud of the inspirational impact you will have on countless numbers of people. You’re an inspiration to me for certain.”
Rich Wilson (Great American III) in his daily messageGENERALI has now been officially declared lost at sea - the rescue mission by members of the Generali team were beaten back by fierce sea conditions and the SAR rescue tracker on the boat has failed. It remains to be seen if she will roam the South Atlantic until the next Vendee in 2012. Yann Ellies is well enough to be flown home, so at least this episode had a happy ending.
Everyone at home, family, team and all those following him in the Race, wish Jonny a calm and speedy New Year and a safe trip home to Sables d’Olonne.
Day 51Dec 29th, 2008
by Yachtmaddie -
Interview with Jonny from Vendee site
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Day 50Dec 28th, 2008
by tim -
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Day 50Dec 28th, 2008
by tim -
Horrific conditions
Jonny’s bulletin this morning describes yet more hideous weather towards the back of the fleet. The news overnight that Derek Hatfield had endured a knockdown and broken some spreaders cannot have done much to cheer things up for Jonny who is now the only one out of the three boats *not* to have have suffered one. In his bulletin he talks about the various measures he can take to limit the damage inside the boat, including to himself, when it gets knocked down.
I’ve been looking online for a video clip showing what a knockdown actually looks like. Because it’s such an extreme event it’s probably not caught on film very often. However, right at the end of the clip below there’s an example of what a knockdown is: it involves the boat quite literally getting smacked over onto its side so that the top of the mast is under water. Please let me know if you can find footage of another one anywhere.
Day 50Dec 28th, 2008
by tim -
Day 46 - Christmas Day
Christmas Day in the Southern Ocean is much the same as any other, windy, rough and brutal to sailors so life for the Vendee Globe skippers is not as much fun as being tucked up at home watching the box. Spoke to Jonny this morning who was in good form, but very tired. The sea state is still really testing and requires just about constant attention to to keep the boat on the tracks. Every problem solved brings another new one to test the ingenuity of the skippers so there is not much rest. Jonny’s latest post from the ARTEMIS site read:
CHRISTMAS ALONE AT SEA FOR BRITISH SOLO SAILOR
25 December 2008
Merry Christmas from Jonny and AORII!
For ocean racing skipper Jonny Malbon, there is no doubt that this Christmas will be a solitary affair. The British solo sailor is currently deep in the hostile Southern Ocean and his only focus for December 25th is to avoid the ferocious weather and survive the horrendous seas currently battering his IMOCA 60 Artemis Ocean Racing II. Malbon, competing in the Vendée Globe, the non-stop solo yacht race around the world, will need all his skills and energy to avoid the heinous and potentially boat breaking conditions.
Malbon, sailing east around 1,000 miles south of Australia, concluded “Christmas day is usually all about relaxing with your family, enjoying a big lunch and curling up in front of a warm fire. Christmas onboard my yacht Artemis is going to be everything but. It’s bad enough to be so far away from home without enduring the present weather conditions. I have a bag of presents which I will enjoy opening - it might be the only time I will hope to get socks!! And probably the first time I will not receive any!!”
“The sea state has been the big problem, with huge towering confused seas that destroy boat speed and any real fast progress. I have been sailing conservatively to preserve the boat, and although it is frustrating at times I know it is the right thing to do for both myself and the boat. We are still out here on the race course, still making progress, and still part of the event - long may it continue.”
Sailing legend Sir Robin Knox-Johnston also sent Jonny a message of support, having given the young British skipper a bottle of Ben Romach whiskey in Les Sables D’Olonne just ahead of the start. Sir Robin concluded, “We will all be thinking of Jonny and toasting him on Christmas Day. It is hard not to think of home, family and friends on this occasion when isolated and alone in the vastness of the Southern Ocean.”
Christmas is day number 45 alone at sea for Malbon since the Vendée Globe race started from France on November 9. With well over 6,000 miles left to sail through the desolate Southern Ocean, before rounding Cape Horn and turning back to race the last 4,000 miles to the finish in Europe, Christmas day will be no different from a normal racing day for Malbon, with massive waves and ice cold rain and sea water crashing over his yacht.
Day 47Dec 25th, 2008
by Yachtmaddie -
3 Great New Video Clips of Jonny
Gosh, it must be Christmas - three at once. The first recorded from the boat yesterday, in which Jonny share his Christmas preparations and wishes us all a merry one, and the other two are trailers for the Sky Sports 2 programme I still haven’t seen called ‘Man on a Mission’.
I think Jon looks really great in the first of these - it’s fantasic to see him looking so chipper 44 days into the race. Go Jonny!
Day 46 onboard Artemis II from Artemis Ocean Racing on Vimeo.
Man on a mission - Part 1 - Trailer from Artemis Ocean Racing on Vimeo.
Man on a mission - Sky Sports 2 - 23 dec @ 1830 from Artemis Ocean Racing on Vimeo.Day 45Dec 23rd, 2008
by tim
