Artforms finishes 2nd in the Transat Jacques Vabre

Sunday, 27 November 2005

Artforms Finish in Salvador

Image © Yvan Zedda

Titanic Finish in Salvador de Bahia, Merfyn Owen and Kip Stone on Artforms.

Kip and Merf finishing the Transat Jacques Vabre in Salvador

Kip Stone and Merf Owen crossed the finish line in Bahia on Open 50 Artforms at 1346 local time (16:46:51 GMT), Friday 25th November, to secure 2nd place in one of the closest finishes the Transat Jacques Vabre has seen so far. Under broody grey cloud cover, the wind filled in finally as for the last couple of nautical miles from the lighthouse to the line, Kip and Merf cruised in heeled nicely over upwind on starboard tack at 10 knots boat speed, both of them in ‘Titanic’ pose on the bow of the boat as they crossed. Looking very weather beaten, this Anglo-American pair of skippers on Artforms had certainly not had time to groom themselves for their arrival. Merf shouted from the boat "Last night was stressful, pretty complicated!" – not surprisingly, as during the morning position reports, bo! th boats were separated by the smallest of margins between 5 – 8 miles. Their elapsed time is 20 days 2 hours 46 minutes and 51 seconds at an average boat speed of 8.99 knots. Their distance behind Gryphon Solo was only 17 hours 41 minutes and 6 seconds. From the start of the Transat Jacques Vabre in Le Havre Artforms had taken a commanding lead of the 7 strong Open 50 fleet until a ripped mainsail in the stormy Bay of Biscay forced them to make a two day pitstop in Lorient overnight between the 7th and 9th November to replace their mainsail with the old one. Definitely the biggest comeback in the story of this race, Artforms went from first to last place, setting off over 400 miles from new race leaders Gryphon Solo. Kip and Merf then “picked off each boat in turn” by taking an early option to position themselves way out West of the Canaries and Cape Verde islands, elongating their route to stay in the strong NE Trades, but avoiding the weather ‘potholes’ ! that the boats ahead got stuck in even before the Doldrums. Af ter tackling the Doldrums (“I never want to go through the Doldrums solo!” declared Merf on the pontoon!), they went on the attack and managed to overhaul the French 50 Vedettes de Bréhat, skippered by 24yr old Servane Escoffier and experienced solo circumnavigator Bertrand de Broc, and their duel to the finish became the closest match in this race just this morning with only 5.7 miles in it 2 hours before the finish. “Servane and Bertrand, they were tenacious, they put that boat in places we thought there was no wind last night, we sailed by the book, they didn’t and they nearly had us right at the end, my hat goes off to them!” said Kip, with caipirinha in hand. “Never have I wanted to finish a race in all my life, “Merf continues, “I could have kept sailing even after the BT Global Challenge finish, but this time, I really wanted to stop, it’s been so hard, so competitive, but also so much fun to do together. I want to do more two-handed racing in the future but d! efinitely not going to go solo!” Camaraderie and competitiveness were evidently the best motivation for the British and American skippers, who by now had started to finish each other’s sentences as they were finally able to look back and laugh about a race that had them gripped for over 20 days round the clock. “We just got into a good rhythm of watches and sailed like two solo sailors,” said Kip. “Well, we just ate, slept, sailed, ate, slept sailed!” they laughed in unison. “We were pretty frazzled mid-way through the race, we’d just gone all out those first few days as we knew we had to reach point X at a certain time or we’d miss the weather window, so we trashed a lot of sails at the start and pushed the boat to the limit. We learnt in this race, you really need two Code 5 sails, tip for the top there!” Merf concluded. And will they be back to contest the Transat Jacques Vabre again and try to even the score with friendly rivals Joe Harris &Josh Hall? “We’ve! got 23 months to lick our wounds and then we’ll be back, we’l! l see if we can get it right next time!” Kip smiled. No sooner than their first caipirinha was downed, their French rivals on Vedettes de Brehat cruised across the finish line 65 minutes later at 17:52:02 GMT to take 3rd place after 20 days, 3 hours, 52 minutes and 2 seconds at sea at an average boat speed of 8.97 knots. The young Servane Escoffier, cousin to Kevin Escoffier, winner of Open 50 Multihull class, and Bertrand De Broc, finished 18 hours, 46 minutes and 17 seconds behind winners Gryphon Solo. Their goal achieved, “to enjoy the race and go for a podium place.” Thanks to the Transat Jacques Vabre (www.jacques-vabre.com) press release and images. Thanks also to Sailing Anarchy (www.sailinganarchy.com) for publishing Merf's logs during the race and allow us to follow Merf and Kip's progess. To find out more about Kip Stone and Artforms visit www.ksopen50.com

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