The 23rd Mini-Transat 2021 - Part 2: The Atlantic calls: with mini courage into the maxi stage

Joy and sorrow were very close together on Friday in Santa Cruz de La Palma in the small camp of German-speaking participants. While series leader Melwin Fink ("SignForCom"), third-placed Austrian Christian Kargl ("All Hands On Deck"), ninth-placed Lennart Burke ("Vorpommern") and proto-skipper Marc Siewert ("Absolute Sailing Team", 24th) started the second and decisive leg of the 23rd Mini-Transat EuroChef over 2700 nautical miles full of hope, "Avanade" skipper Lina Rixgens was left with a heavy heart. After her double rudder breakage on leg one and the strong fighting performance to bring her boat to the finish nevertheless, another technical problem caused the knock-out blow. During a dive the day before the start, Rixgens discovered that her keel bomb was loose. Here is what happened after the shock discovery in her words: "We immediately craned the boat out - in the hope that what we had discovered under water might not be true. The bomb is secured with three bolts. We uncovered everything. Two of the three nuts were loose. We put new ones in and tightened everything up again. This morning(Ed.: on the start day)When everything was reasonably dry, we lifted the boat up again by crane, but the keel bomb was still not completely fixed. It's simply not safe enough for a transatlantic crossing."

Because the connection between the keel, fin and boat was completely tight, Rixgens had not been able to spot the problem beforehand. "You can't see it," she explains the late discovery. The end is particularly bitter, as the two new rudders had finally arrived in Santa Cruz de La Palma the day before. "We had just put them back on and taken a trip outside. That was actually stressful enough," said Rixgens with a sense of gallows humour about her Wevo 6.5 boat, which had not sailed under a lucky star right from the start and had caused its owner a series of problems and technical challenges, but never became the series boat that it should have become. Instead, without a sufficiently large number of boats built to mini-statutes, it remained a proto that was incessantly on the rocks.

The last problem was now one too many and ended Lina Rixgen's dream of a second completed mini-transat. "I made the decision on Friday morning, when the others were already handing in their mobile phones. Nobody really needs that," she says dejectedly. The likeable doctor is left with "nice thoughts about the second leg of my mini premiere" and good wishes for her travelling companions: "I told them that they now have to sail twice as fast and have twice as much fun - for me too," said Rixgens. She had to watch the start from the window of her accommodation at 4 p.m. German time on Friday afternoon instead of being there herself.

The start of the stage was unspectacular in light winds. While co-favourite Léo Debiesse on his series boat "Les Alphas" quickly took the lead and was able to extend it to a third of a nautical mile ahead of Romain Le Gall on "Les Optimistes - Tribord" two and a half hours after the start, Christian Kargl on his "Al Hands On Deck" also got serious about his plan: "I'm going to go full throttle. It might be my last big mini race. I want to take every wind shift and every rain cloud in my stride." Kargl was in fifth place in the series boat fleet at nightfall.

Lennart Burke and Melwin Fink started their transatlantic premiere as soloists somewhat more cautiously: Burke's "Vorpommern" was in 22nd place a few hours after the start in a field that was still sailing close together, while Melwin Fink had worked his way up from 31st to 25th place at that point. Marc Siewert, who was in 24th and last place in the Proto fleet after the first leg, initially joined the field in 17th place. The "usual suspects" are leading the Protos: Tanguy Bouroullec ("Tollec MP/Pogo") sailed in the lead ahead of Thomas Grandin ("Poch' Trott"), Fabio Muzzolino ("Tartine sans Beurre") and the fabulous Irina Gracheva ("Path"). The mini fleet is expected in around two and a half weeks' time in the islands of the Lesser Antilles, where the finish line is in Saint-François on Guadeloupe. Click here for the tracker and the intermediate results (please click!).