Guo Chuan/Green Dragon/Volvo Ocean Race
The helmsman needs to know where the waves are and how to ease the boat through, rather than crash into them with a boat-stopping shudder. Soft hands and a soft landing ...
Wednesday 13 May 2009 13:00 GMT
You have power to burn. You fire up the machine on the edge of a forest. It is pitch black. You then drive through the forest at breakneck speed with no headlights. And you have no brakes. Welcome to the world at the wheel of a Volvo Open 70.
If there is a prima donna position on board, it is at the helm of a racing yacht. But there is a variety of tests that distinguish the best from the average.
The better the helmsman, the easier it looks but a gentle coaxer in light airs may not be in such control in heavy conditions and driving at night can be a real problem for some.
There are those that can just feel when the boat is in a sweet groove and those who cannot. Some can concentrate for hours on end, others see performance fade relatively quickly.
All need to know, or divine, where the waves are and how to ease the boat through, rather than crash into them with a boat-stopping shudder. Soft hands and a soft landing keeps everyone happy.
To add another problem to the forest-like obstacle course, it can also be like driving over a ploughed field. If that all sounds rather agricultural, there are the high-tech task masters of computer evaluation watching, always watching. In a dinghy or club racing boat the judgment can be made by eye when two boats line up against each other.
On the vast open spaces of the ocean it is possible sometimes still to find two boats constantly in sight of each other, or to go nearly a whole leg without seeing another boat.
But, down below, the numbers are constantly flashing, and showing current performance against target performance. It is possible for the numbers to become a tyranny and there is latitude, on such long legs, to steer the boat off course for a while to keep up speed in the expectation of compensating later. And changing sails can lose even more time.
But stray too far, or see the average speed drop too much and there will be a prompt change of the man on the wheel. It may be after as little as half an hour; it will rarely be more than two hours.
Drop your guard when it is relatively benign and the loss will only be measured in distance. Drop your guard when life is tough and all sorts of calamities can pile up very rapidly.
Worst is to lose control so much that, when roaring downwind, the boat turns through the wind and everything is on the wrong side, the boat is flattened, people and gear are thrown all over the place and chaos reigns. Sometimes it can take 20 or 30 minutes for the boat to right itself. That is a major.
Another problem for the helmsman is that he has to face forward. This means that, when the spray is coming at him, as one skipper described, like something from a power hose, he has to wear a full face mask and helmet to protect him from the assault. Even so, after a particularly heavy ‘trick’, the eyeballs can be hanging out on stalks and there is enough salt caked around the face and eyes to need a small chisel to remove it.
And this is a skill which is given to some and permanently denied to others. If you don’t get it, you don’t get it but, despite all the other jobs which need to be done and done well, you can never have enough helmsmen when life becomes a bit extreme on a Volvo Open 70.
This article appears in Life At The Extreme, the Volvo Ocean Race 2008-09 Official Souvenir Programme. Available to download here in four languages.
At 14:08 13 May 2009, Jane Allen wrote
IPlease is there a definition of "upwind sailing", having read no cruise across the atlantic? Many thanks
At 18:12 13 May 2009, carlos pedro heisler wrote
Once a boat goes into stealth mode, does he continue receiving the three houerly scheds about what the other boats are doing or is he blanketed out from outside information.
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Dave Kneale/Volvo Ocean Race