Transat CIC: Oliver Heer at the Transat finish line - "I went through a nightmare"
Tatjana Pokorny
· 17.05.2024
Oliver Heer's toughest race lasted 18 days, 10 hours, 49 minutes and 32 seconds. On the evening of 16 May, the Swiss finally reached the finish line of the Transat CIC, some 110 nautical miles off New York, after the toughest of trials. The best - Yoann Richomme and Boris Herrmann - had already arrived a good ten days before the Swiss.
Now the 36-year-old Imoca soloist from Zurich, who worked as a boat captain for Alex Thomson for a long time and had sailed more than 40,000 nautical miles together with the Brit, has made it against all odds. "I went through a nightmare," said Heer at the finish. Now he is "happy, very, very happy". His first reaction: "My main feeling is relief. There were times when I wasn't sure if we would make it, so it's very special that we did it."
The lesson is: never give up!" (Oliver Heer)
He continues: "It's a good feeling to be finished. The lesson is: never give up! There is always a way to get the boat to the finish. We've learnt a lot from this, but we'll do the debriefing in a few days' time. Heer had to master the last 100 nautical miles or so to New York with wind from the front. Heer's boat from 2007 - which is about the same age as Isabelle Joschke's "Macsf" - had made a brutal patent jibe after the autopilot failed and was lying heavily on its side.
The blackout on 5 May
In 35 to 40 knots of wind and heavy seas, the Imoca and its skipper were hit by a huge wave on 5 May and almost rolled over. This was followed by a total power failure. Oliver Heer had to struggle for several days to set up a rudimentary alternative energy system on board with the help of his solar panels. As the soloist was initially unable to use the autopilot, he fought his way to the destination using manual steering. What this meant for him can be clearly seen from his course in the tracking: The sleep breaks took the form of severe course deviations, which can be recognised as jags and bumps. At one point, Oliver Heer was so tired that he slept for five hours in a row and sailed in the wrong direction.
It was a massacre" (Oliver Heer)
When the knockdown came, Oliver Heer still had 1,300 nautical miles to go. He remembers the knockdown itself more vividly than he would have liked: "I had sailed upwind for hours with the mainsail and the J2 in around 38 knots of wind. I wasn't overtired, I felt quite comfortable. I was at the navigation station when the pilot suddenly initiated a patent gybe. I was sailing at 145 degrees TWA. I don't know what happened. But when you have to jibe with a full stack and full ballast, you tip over pretty quickly. And then a big wave hit me and threw me off even more. I checked my logbooks later: I was heeling 128 degrees ..."
The consequences of the knockdown
Heer describes the consequences of the involuntary manoeuvre drastically: "It was carnage. The worst thing was that I had a complete power cut after ten seconds, no electricity, nothing. All this at 3 o'clock in the morning at 40 knots - not a pleasant situation. I flew through the boat below deck, bruised my elbow badly and had a sore neck. The first 24 hours were then in full crisis mode. I had no power and had to somehow get the sails down safely. The J2 furler was broken, so I really struggled to furl it. And there was a lot of damage."
In difficult times, Heer was fuelled by the hope of qualifying for the Vendée Globe. Because he had already had to abandon the Transat Jacques Vabre last year with rig damage and subsequently also missed the return race Retour à La Base to Lorient, Heer absolutely had to finish this North Atlantic Transat in order to preserve his chance of qualifying for the solo race around the world.
He spent a few days "licking my wounds" after the accident. Then, according to Heer, things got back on track step by step: "I managed to set up a simple electrical system that could power the most important things with my solar cells, which fed the engine battery. And when the sun was shining, I could run the most important things on the boat: satellite radio, the simple pilot, downloading Grib files. So I slowly got going again. But up there at the Grand Banks it's grey, foggy, horrible. I couldn't do much for the first few days. I had no AIS, was in the shipping lane and saw ships all around me, which wasn't very nice either. But I'm still in one piece. Only the boat has some damage."
The resurrection
Oliver Heer also remembers his mental resurrection well and says: "I'm normally quite resilient, positive and creative. I was completely devastated. It was the first time like that on a sailing boat. I just didn't know what to do or how to do it. I still had those 1,300 miles to go."
The condition lasted for a while, as Heer reports: "I was really overwhelmed for a day or two. Then I spoke to Dr Wolfgang Jenewein. He is a brilliant man. His key message was: 'Ollie, there's no other option, you have to ... accept this shit, embrace it'. I also had a few thousand litres of water in the boat, the diesel tanks were leaking, there was shit everywhere. And he said, 'Look, Ollie, you've just got to embrace it, anything else is a waste of your mental energy. And you need all of it." I wrote that on the wall in the boat and got to work. I had a list of priorities, I had to list all the things I needed."
Oliver Heer has written the advice of his mental coach on the side of the boat in black sharpie: "Embrace this shit!" The Swiss is now determined to repair his boat and the damaged sails in time to take part in the return race, the New York Vendée. The starting signal for the second Transat in a row, in which Transat CIC runner-up Boris Herrmann will also be taking part again, will be given on 29 May off New York.
Clarisse Crémer in a race against time
The Frenchwoman Clarisse Crémer is still underway after a lengthy repair stop in the Azores. The "L'Occitane en Provence" skipper still had almost 380 nautical miles to go to the finish line on Friday morning. She was hoping to reach the line in a race against time before it closes on 20 May.
