The first Leg of the IMOCA Istanbul Europe Race to Nice is behind us, and without doubt is has been the most intense racing I have done in the last years. With the race course covering the whole of the Mediterranean east to west there are plenty of obstacles for us to get around in this five up race.

Sailing with Guillermo Altadill on his Open 60 Estrella Damm, it is the first regatta we are entering in this class and we even managed to win the first leg! Certainly a great start for the sailing team, the shore crew and the project as a whole. Now now the pressure is on to do a repeat performance in the next leg to Barcelona, the home port of the team. However, the leg win is obviously lifting the spirit in the team, and we are looking forward to the rest of the race.

The corporation with Guillermo and the rest of the crew is going very well, and with the smaller crew it is easy to quickly gel the team and sort out responsibilities and crew positions. Basically we are way understaffed, and so all five of us are running from station to station like mad men and are filling the different jobs at hand as we go. Somehow we make it all work, although the spaghetti of ropes in the cockpit after the maneuver takes about twenty minutes to untangle and clean up.

Reflecting on it the day after the finish two things stand out that makes this racing so intense:

The crew of five gives you enough personnel to push the boat all the time to max performance and do efficient sail changes, but at the same time there is very little time to catch up with sleep. In the Volvo Ocean Race world we are worried how we will sail the boats with only nine crew, and sure the Volvo 70s are even more powerful boats than the Open 60s and the competition is even tighter, but try sailing these Open 60 beasts with five crew and you will realise that life on the Volvo boats is pretty easy.

The other stress factor is the track through the Med. I don't know how many times we had to go through a transition zone or cross the lee of yet another island in the way, so there is never a time to relax as even a fifty mile lead can disappear within a sched or two. In the lee of Sardinia we hit the wall and were stuck for at least three hours, whilst we could see the boat behind us (Groupe Bell) come from behind and sail around us only a few miles away. At the same time we made a crucial gain on Foncia on the last stretch from Corsica to Nice, sailing a couple of miles further to windward of them. We saw them loose the breeze completely below us and in no time their fifteen mile lead was converted in a for mile deficit. Ouch!

So it is all on for the sprint to Barcelona before we leave the Med and take on the autumn Atlantic to get to the finish in Brest. I am booking an appointment at the physiotherapist for a massage for the day after. Were are all those grinders we usually have on this size boats?