By Craig Schweitzer

I submitted my sailing CV to the powers that be, the owner and skipper of the Yacht “Prodigy”, to join the team to sail to Rio De Janeiro from Cape Town. It took a little longer than I had hoped, but finally the confirmation came through, I was to be a second helmsman / trimmer for the team. The rest of the team consisted of Chris the owner / skipper, Alex Schon helmsman / trimmer, Wolf Seitz the Master Navigator, Gareth the new boat captain, Goodman the pit and bow man, supported by Gabriel.

The Start
The week preceding the race was filled with last minute work. Spare water, spare diesel, provisioning, gas for the cooker, navigational planning and testing, fitting of the new sails, the boat was a hive of activity. Finally the day came to start the race. The race kicked off with a blessing of the fleet breakfast at 08:00, which I missed and arrived in time for the blessing. It is quite a quaint way to bid us farewell. All our kit was loaded, diesel and water tanks full, a final photo shoot for fans and the press and then we were under way. However the wind was not playing ball, in fact I think it forgot to get out of bed that day! There were hundreds of boats out to see us off. The race committee wanted to have a clear start, so they created an exclusion zone where all the spectator boats were asked to keep out of. No one listened! It was absolute carnage, we even had cruising cats reversing towards us with less than a minute before the start. The start gun was clear, a canon on board one of the South Africa Navy vessels. We had a really good and clear start. Prodigy seemed to revel in the light conditions, when compared to the rest of the fleet, and we managed to get to the first mark with a healthy lead over the rest of the fleet, so naturally we had all the press boats and helicopters hovering around us, but shortly after the first mark, the wind started to build and our pace improved. One by one the spectator boats turned around to head back to Cape Town, and then we were all alone, heading out into the big blue yonder.


Early Days The first few days were in about 15 knots of breeze, and were most pleasurable sailing wise. We managed to pull out over 100 nautical miles on the second boat and everything was looking good. However our navigation system showed us a divide in the South Atlantic High Pressure System, and made us choose our course between heading north of the top high, or make our way between the two. Our projections showed that this situation would last for the next four days, so we had to choose. The northern option added many miles to our overall distance, and our optimised route as worked out by our software was to go between the two systems. We arrived at this decision a day before the next competitor, and so were affected the most. Our wind dropped which was closely followed by our boat speed. This was frustrating because the rest of the fleet was still in wind and now closing the gap we had worked so hard to create. The four day prediction lasted only a day, long enough to let the fleet catch us from behind, but filling in as they arrived. We were also plagued by compass problems, and our Kebble Compass lead us astray for a few hours, only exacerbating our situation.



The set up of the boat, and the original design was one of an Apparent Wind Reacher. The theory is that the boat sails fast enough to significantly affect the wind direction, the apparent wind direction, which you can then use to sail the boat to a lower true wind angle. In reality, the boat did not sail lower than 130 to 140 degrees of true wind angle, unless the wind was over 20 knots. Now the standard format of the race tends to be to sail around the northern edge of the South Atlantic High, on about the 1018 mb isobar. The route is north of the Great Circle Route, and tends to be almost dead down wind. Prodigy did not like this angle of sail, so we had to head higher to create better wind pressure, and hence better boat speed. This resulted in us having to gybe our way down the course as if we were sailing short courses. We gybed the boat on any variation of wind direction to try make the most of the angles we had to sail. But still in the light winds we were experiencing, this was not enough to allow this great boat to come into her own. It was like a driver of a formula one car, only being allowed to use a quarter throttle.



A close call
We were sailing along in about 15 knots of breeze, Wolf was on the helm, and everything was tranquil. All of a sudden Wolf shouted out that he had seen something in the water. It was the most excitement that day, so we were all intent on seeing what the excitement was about. Wolf continued saying that it looked like a metal buoy or even a submarine! At that time, Gareth was doing some maintenance work up the mast, so I signalled to him to look out for something in the water. He looked around, and then became stunned and fixated on a particular point right in front of the boat. We followed his desperate stare as it joined the hull of the boat, but still no words were spoken. Just then, the water parted with a great grey shape appeared, making a water spurting sound. A Southern Right Whale surfaced less than a meter from the stern of our boat, very calm, but with a leering eye as if to say, “What the hell are you doing????” After speaking to Gareth, it turns out that there was a mother and calf swimming together, and we were aimed straight at them. Mother gave a powerful flick of her tail and created a small gape between herself and her calf, which we slid through unawares.



A night of chaos
I came onto watch one night at 20:00, the wind was up to 18 knots, and the sky was overcast. It was only just before darkness, so I had a few minutes to acclimatise to the conditions. The wind started to strengthen, and was eventually up to 30 knots. This stirred the sea state up, and we were contending with 3 to 4 meter waves. We had a full main sail up, joined by the A3 assymetrical spinnaker. The 30 knots and larger waves were just the catalyst we needed to get Prodigy out of the water and up onto a plain. But the conditions were less than ideal. By now it was dark, …. Real dark. The sky was completely black, as was the sea, so it was impossible to distinguish the sky from the sea. In addition to this, there was not so much as a single star to steer by, so everything had to happen by instrumentation. Because of our earlier Kebble Compass problems, we had our instrumentation sourced from the GPS, which has the disadvantage of being 5 to 6 seconds behind real time. So if you change course, it only shows 6 seconds later on the instrumentation. When you lift off down a wave, and need to know instantly whether the boat is tracking straight, heading up or heading down, and the instruments only tell you after you need the information, they become somewhat useless. So you are left to your own devices. This scenario makes you concentrate so much harder to give you a chance of steering the boat safely, so after half an hour of serious concentration, you are exhausted. Because of the deteriorating conditions, I was ably assisted on trimming by Gareth and Gabriel, who were trimming and grinding the winches to prevent the spinnaker from collapsing. This task was a little beyond that of a single person. We were pushing the boat, and achieving speeds of over 24 knots.

After two and a half hours of “playing”, I could not continue, and asked for a replacement helmsman. On deck was wet and wild, and those below decks were quite happy not to come onto watch at that time. However Wolf showed his head to see the carnage going on, and was a very welcomed relief. My eyes were not focussing so well now, so I relished the idea of a warm, dry bunk and the attempt of sleep. Well this was not to be. 15 minutes into my off period, the steering system made a loud bang and the boat fell over onto its side. The sails were flapping wildly and were almost successful in drowning out the plaintiff calls from the watch on deck for assistance, as the steering cables had snapped. All hands on deck, assess the situation, drop the sails, get the boat shipshape, and then address the problems. Wolf stuck his headlamp on his forehead and headed for the bilges to fix the steering. An hour later we were good to go, and hoisted the main and got under way.



Fisherman’s Frenzy
When we were about 60 miles out of Rio, we came upon a row of small black & white floaters, holding up a nylon line. We adjusted course so as not to sail over the lines. Then a little further down the line, we see this fishing boat heading towards us in quite a frenzy. We cross paths, and Gabriel, our Mozambiquan Mexican, raises them on the radio, and they tell us to turn around, as the line is 5 miles that way, and not far the other. We came across two other such fishermen, whose lines halted our progress, and necessitated our deviations.

Dead End
Once we were passed the fisherman’s obstacle course, it was our last stretch to get into Rio. The finish line was set right off the beach of Copacabana, which should have made for great spectator value. As we progressed, the wind started to die. We had 15 knots until the start of the fisherman, and were now down to about 8 knots. The day moved on, and we slowly closed the gap on Rio. Our navigation aid said we were in for a torrid time with no wind, and it was right. Vaal Dam sailing at its best, and because it is what Alex and I know, we were the dedicated low wind drivers. We alternated every 3 hours or so, trying our hardest to keep up a respectable speed, but not always successful. Alex took the 16:00 to 19:00 watch and I took over from him as the sun was setting. By now the wind was a” glorious” 4 to 5 knots.

Because the finish was off shore, the race control wanted to meet us at the finishing mark, together with the press boat. They kept asking us about our ETA, and with the wind all over the place, our ETA was jumping around with a 12 hour variance. The press wanted desperately to take pictures of the first boat to Rio, and so chartered a boat to bring them the 26 miles we still had to sail. They never arrived!

We started hearing fog horns, and could see a line of what could have been fog. As it was now dark, it was really difficult to make anything out. We got to about 6 miles from the finish, and the wind died to about 3 knots, giving us a boat speed of less than 2knts. Sure enough the fog rolled in, and our visability rolled out. We could see little more than a boat length from the boat. We made our way towards some lights, and as we got closer, realised that it was the place where ships waiting to enter the port anchored. We were tacking between these lights, getting closer and identifying the lights as ships. There was a stage when I could hear a water lapping on an object. I asked Wolf if there was an island or channel marker buoy in this vicinity, and there was not. I asked if anyone could see anything, and nothing was visible. I altered course 15 degrees, and we drifted alongside the noise. All of a sudden we cleared the bow of a ship and once alongside, could see the lights on the bow, decks and bridge. We sailed narrowly passed. At about midnight, I handed the helm back to Alex, but the wind was almost dead still. We finally got to a point where we were aiming at the finish, but were making way in the opposite direction! We headed to port to try make way, we headed to starboard to try make way, and nothing was working. Our fears were realised, the wind had ceased and we were being taken out to sea by the outgoing current. Our best sail in this circumstance was our anchor. So over the side it went! We dropped our sails, and there we sat. I swore (a whole lot) and retired to my bunk to swear some more. We were about 500 meters from the finish when we had to drop the anchor. We had sailed 3400 nautical miles, over 6000 kilometers, only to have to drop our anchor 500 meters from the finish, in dense fog, in the darkness of night, with not a soul around us.

I awoke a little before dusk to find Alex and Goodman drinking coffee on the deck. I joined them. The light was slowly infiltrating the darkness, and the situation was becoming clearer. There we sat at anchor, whilst the rest of the fleet were making 8 to 10 knots on our position. After about 15 minutes, a few of the smallest ripples appeared on the water. Wind? The gauges were not convinced and registered nothing. The ripples increased, it was wind. I asked Alex if we should put up some sail and see what happens, anchor down and all. He suggested a jib, I countered him and said we should put up the BIG spinnaker. So we did, but it was a good thing Gareth was not on deck, being a sailing instructor, this move was not something one would want to teach his students. The anchor line pulled taught, we were making way, so it was time for the anchor to be brought up. There was a lot of pressure on the anchor, and Alex and Goodman were not getting it up. So we awoke the rest of the crew to lend a hand. It turned out we had hooked an undersea cable, which we had to bring to the surface to free ourselves. We soon were making about 4 knots in the direction of the finish line which was now about a mile away. We held our breath and finally crossed the line in a time of 15 days, 23 hours and 57 minutes.