The majority of the mini sailors are still at sea. The last solo skippers are not expected at the finish until Tuesday. But the decisions were made on Sunday- Finally, it has to be said. Until the very end, it was unclear who would come out on top. The podium places in the Proto class were in doubt until the early afternoon. And probably no other ocean race in this class has been as nerve-wracking as this one.
Complicated weather situation
It was clear even before the start in Horta on the Azores that the weather conditions for the second stage would be tricky. But just how difficult only became clear during the race. The conditions were so tricky that numerous Figaro skippers, who were sailing their season's highlight in a week's time, watched the tracker spellbound and studied the weather. This is what proto-triumphant Pierre Le Roy told YACHT online this lunchtime.
A wedge of high pressure split the course diagonally from south-west to north-east. The participants had to decide in favour of a longer, but more aft wind promising strategy, or a long upwind leg close to the great circle course to Les Sables. The advantage went to the south group first, before the north-sailing skippers benefited.
In the end, Pierre Le Roy won, albeit by a narrow margin. He only crossed the finish line around three hours ahead of the overall runner-up, Jacques Delcroix. However, due to his superior victory in the first stage, Le Roy would not have been able to take the overall victory even if he had finished significantly lower.
Behind the two Frenchmen, Uros Krasevac crossed the line in third place. The Slovenian had followed the recommendation of his navigator Jure Jerman and sailed stubbornly northwards for a long time, which initially put him at the back of the Proto class. But then it was payback time. In the meantime, the rookie, who started on a Sam Manuard design from 2009, was leading the classification, but had to let Le Roy and Delcroix go when crossing an intermediate high.
Krasevac, who only joined the Mini class this spring, equalled his traumatic experience at the finish of the first leg with third place. There, also in third place, he had the finish within his grasp, but had to dodge an outgoing boat at the last moment and lost more than four hours and one place due to an offshore tide and light wind. This time he left nothing to chance.
However, his success was hard-won. After just a few days, the wind mode for the autopilot on his on-board computer failed; from then on, the Slovenian could only steer by compass course. Not a major problem in light winds, but unthinkable in the recent fresh breeze with which he crossed the finish line. "I had to steer by hand for most of the last 50 hours," said the man with the ukulele.
Tricky tactical decisions
However, he found it even more difficult to make the right tactical decisions. No wonder: the mini 6.50 sailors cannot pull grib files from the net and have them analysed on a laptop using sophisticated routing programmes. Instead, they only have access to rudimentary weather information by radio, which is often difficult or impossible to understand acoustically. This makes the achievement of Pierre Le Roy, who made his own sense of the vagaries of nature, all the more impressive.
But Le Roy was not the fastest. Uros Krasevac took the top spot. At 1,664 nautical miles, he sailed the longest distance because he stopped so far north, and at 7.1 knots he had the highest average speed of all the soloists. In comparison, Le Roy: 1,533 nautical miles and an average of 6.7 knots.
At the time of going to press at 10pm on Sunday evening, it was not yet clear who would finish on the overall podium in the series boats. Felix Oberle is theoretically a candidate, but with an expected 10th place overall in the second stage and 4th place in the first stage, he could just miss the podium. Nevertheless, he has presented himself very strongly and should be one of the best non-French riders in the field at the Mini-Transat in a year's time.
Update classification series boats, Sunday, 23:30
Felix Oberle has confirmed his tenth place in the second leg. With a total time of 20 days 23 hours and 12 minutes, he finished fifth in the race, less than three minutes behind fourth place. This confirms his good form from leg 1.
Further back in the field, the Austrian Lisa Berger is currently sailing in 48th place, having had to pass through a zone with extremely light winds yesterday and today, which set her back. She still has around 250 nautical miles to go to the finish.
Click here for the tracker of the SAS regatta, as the race Les Sables-Les Açores-Les Sables is called in short form ( please click! )
Jochen Rieker
Herausgeber YACHT
