Mini-Transat 2019: The comeback after the low blow: stage bronze for Bogacki

Morten Bogacki defended his third place on the second transatlantic stage right to the finish. The 33-year-old crossed the finish line off Le Marin on Martinique 14 days, 5 hours, 26 minutes and 24 seconds after the starting signal off Las Palmas a fortnight ago. Bogacki reached the finish of the French solo classic from La Rochelle via Las Palmas to the Caribbean on Thursday evening at 7.59 pm local time and was enthusiastically welcomed there by his girlfriend Beatrice, the sailors who had already arrived and the organisers.

Three days earlier, the only German sailor in the field had fought his way up boat by boat to third place in the prototype classification and never relinquished it until the end. For the skipper of Offshore Team Germany (OTG), who competes for the Kieler Yacht-Club and the Düsseldorfer Yacht-Club, the leap onto the podium marked the long-awaited redemption after the technical near-knockout on the first leg from La Rochelle to Las Palmas. The failure of both autopilots and a broken traveller had almost thrown the 505 Junior World Champion out of the race completely. However, Bogacki fought back and steered his Mini 6.50 "Lilienthal" by hand for five brutal days and nights with almost no sleep. However, this exceptional performance could not console him for the fact that he had finished eleventh, well below his potential.

Morten Bogacki's initial reactions to the course and outcome of his solo transatlantic premiere

Instead of lamenting for a long time, he repaired his boat on Gran Canaria and replaced the autopilot. "I also had to get myself back on my feet mentally and make progress," Bogacki recalls of the weeks in Las Palmas. He obviously succeeded in doing so in a sustainable way. The fact that he was able to add the French colours to the German ones on the podium on stage two, even without much training this year, was something he himself had hardly thought possible until shortly before crossing the finish line: "I'm surprised that I was able to finish the stage ahead of Erwan (Le Mene) and Tanguy (Bouroullec). I had very little preparation for this race, having hardly sailed this year before the Mini-Transat. So I'm happy with the result. In terms of the overall standings, however, the two of them should still be ahead of me."

Due to the traditionally very limited communication options in this solo race, the skippers only receive a weather report and an overview of the order of the boats once a day. As a result, it remained unclear for Bogacki until a few hours before the finish whether he would be able to hold on to his podium position until the very end. He has it now. What this means for the overall standings was not entirely certain on Sunday night. Before the arrival of the following rivals, the only thing that was initially certain was that it would be at least fifth place. This meant that Bogacki was actually able to achieve his deliberately ambitious top five target before the race with his unleashed final sprint.

The "Lilienthal" skipper experienced the first few days of this second leg in much the same way as series winner Ambrogio Beccaria had already impressively described it on Friday, when he called his boat a "dictator" and compared life on it to that of a fish, even though the human body is not made for it. Bogacki told YACHT online late that evening: "The boat goes through the wave rather than over it. It drills into the waves. It was insanely wet on board at the start." The doctor from Eckernförde will not soon forget the last two days either, as the approach to the finish line turned into a battle of nerves in the intense heat and decreasing, shifting winds. The two Frenchmen behind Bogacki did not let up, but the German positioned himself well throughout, was able to keep them at a distance even without knowing their exact positions and at least recognised the extent of the challenge he had just mastered at the finish. "When I reached the Îlet à Cabrit, I looked around and said to myself: Wow, that was 3000 nautical miles of open sea!"

Without comparable experience and preparation, Bogacki was not quite able to match the second place that Hamburg offshore professional Jörg Riechers achieved in 2017 on the same, then still new "Lilienthal" in the Mini-Transat in his solo premiere on the Atlantic after the technical low blow. However, for a novice, his leadership can be categorised as fabulous. The organisers also saw it that way, attesting Bogacki "an exemplary performance" on his boat with the bow number 934, saying he "never stopped pushing" and "gave everything", finishing his transatlantic premiere "masterfully"

Here to see the results and the ongoing tracker.

UPDATE17 November, 6.30 p.m.: The "Lilienthal" skipper has not only arrived at the finish port of Le Marin on Martinique in third place - Bogacki has even catapulted himself onto the overall podium with this outstandingly sailed second mini-transat leg from Las Palmas to the Caribbean. The 33-year-old doctor will be honoured on 7 December at the Salon Nautique boat show in Paris as third in the proto classification (in the addition of both legs). The race organisers confirmed this to YACHT online on Sunday evening.