I’m 3 days late posting this but – great sail by Delamare!
He sailed to the race line with no mainsail, due to a broken boom. Mowgli had a knockdown and the boom was badly damaged. So Delamare came home on his headsail. Great job.
Link to the GSC story here: https://globalsolochallenge.com/philippe-delamare-wins-gsc-en
Philippe Delamare posted this last week and I have been meaning to put it up as a superb case study. For sailing. For business. For life.
“Let me explain: we all start with a strategy, a roadmap, a certain level of aggression versus a degree of caution, ambition, a vision of what we came for. It’s really great to have tons of messages of support, words of encouragement, signs of friendship. But they are often also opinions, advice, especially caution and safety. Paradoxically, all of this can become anxiety-inducing – discreetly – which is very bad of course, and can influence you or make you lose sight of the direction of your initial energy.”
Link here Straight Line
Displacement boats, like Frank, rely on the length of hull in the water to counterbalance the wind in the sails & generate movement through the sea. Planing boats use forwards momentum through the water to lift the hull dynamically out of the water, reducing resistance and increasing speed with a direct transfer of wind power from the sails to the boat’s direction.
So a displacement boat has a speed limiter. Its length of hull in the water determines the max amount of wind power that it can convert into movement.
Great job by Philippe Delamare: he “has sailed only 800 Nautical miles in excess of the theoretical route with a “wastage” of just 3.2%”
https://globalsolochallenge.com/100-days-everest/
https://globalsolochallenge.com/mauritania-piracy/
Getting close to Africa’s western coast, aside from not being a logical choice as in typical seasonal weather should mean finding headwinds and opposing currents, not to mention the not entirely unlikely chance of pirate attacks. However, if weather systems are displaced from their normal position the fastest route may take skippers further inshore.
Even though pirates are known to mainly target cargo ships, attacks on yachts are not unheard of.
https://globalsolochallenge.com/polyphasic-sleep/
During your first solo races, the switch from monophasic to polyphasic sleep can be very hard. It can take up to 3-4 day of adaptation, this effectively means that for shorter races you never even get to see the benefits. During longer races on the other hand, after the third or fourth day we will notice that our body has adapted. We no longer feel the same impulse for sleep as direct correlation with day and night.
Click the link to read the whole item
frankjustfrank 