{"id":12121,"date":"2021-04-02T23:23:16","date_gmt":"2021-04-03T06:23:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/windpilot.com\/blog\/en\/?page_id=12121"},"modified":"2021-04-02T23:23:51","modified_gmt":"2021-04-03T06:23:51","slug":"roulette-francaise","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/windpilot.com\/blog\/en\/columns\/peter-the-market\/sponsoring\/roulette-francaise\/","title":{"rendered":"Roulette Francaise"},"content":{"rendered":"

LEARNING THE LESSONS FROM THE VEND\u00c9E GLOBE<\/strong>
\n\"\"If you want to drive to Les Sables, there are better places to start from than Hamburg. That said, the journey can be done in fourteen motorway hours these days provided Paris is passed at night (hit the P\u00e9ripherique at the wrong time and you get a real insight into what awaits in the Pot-au-Noir). When I made the trip 30\u00a0years ago, before Europe’s roads had been fully modernised and before TomTom had arrived to light my way, I once spent a whole two days threading a labyrinthine course through to the French Atlantic coast. Paper map in lap, I swerved from adventure to adventure until the name of (what would later become) the great French sailing Mecca finally appeared on the signs. \"\"Inspired by my Hungarian friend Nandor Fa, I headed to Les Sables that year to investigate for myself whether there might be any opportunities for Windpilot among the fleet. Nandor had piqued my interest, I was curious about the event in any case and it was November, so a change of scene and something to do were most welcome.\u2028
\n\"\"Arriving in Les Sables, I discovered it was November there too \u2013 low grey skies, a freezing wind and horizontal rain \u2013 so I decided to start by finding a hotel. Not so fast! Every hotel and guest house I tried gave me the same answer: “complet”, fully booked, no room at the inn. Having searched for hours in vain I coasted quietly into a dark parking space by the beach and, thoroughly exhausted, fell asleep to the gentle humming of the engine. With morning and first light came another surprise: it turned out the whole area was thronged with cars doubling as bedrooms. The sight of so many people roughing it at such a cold time of year told me money was tight, as did the state of the French vehicles (I was driving a French vehicle too as it happens \u2013 the GRP Espace produced by aircraft manufacturer Matra \u2013 but it was in pretty good shape at the time and, being plastic, entirely rust-free. A German in a French car \u2013 formidable!\u2028\"\"Excitement filled the air in the days leading up to the start as the 18 star athletes and their flying machines (all still relatively narrow in the beam at that time and sporting none of the wacky appendages \u2013 above and below the waterline \u2013 that we more or less take for granted today) made their final preparations ready to be towed out to the line and launched into the Bay of Biscay. The spectator boats turned out in their hundreds on race day, churning the sea to a mass of seething foam. A whole flotilla of bouncing press boats appeared too, transporting all the reporters whose budget had not stretched to a spot aboard one of the helicopters buzzing overhead. It was sailing, but not as I knew it…\u2028 \"\"One hundred and nine days later, Titouan Lamazou and his boat \u00c9cureuil d’Aquitaine II were back in Les Sables. Patrice Carpentier, whose Le Nouvel Observateur had one of my transom ornaments installed, retired from the race along with six other solo sailing heroes. My agreement with Patrice stated that the Windpilot could only be used when wind and speed were steady but I spent the whole of Patrice’s race on tenterhooks anyway because I had quickly realised a windvane self-steering system hadn’t a hope of keeping one these sleds on course in gusty or shifty conditions. How, after all, can a poor windvane be expected to tell the difference between a boat moving slowly in light air and a boat fully powered up and sending it when the apparent wind angle is the same?\u2028\"\"Had I known then what I know now, I would have left the Vend\u00e9e well alone after that, but in my ignorance I had already given Nandor Fa and Jose Ugarte my word that I would equip both their boats for the next edition. I subsequently met up with Nandor on the island of Krk for some sailing on the Adriatic. We had a few other adventures together too as he visited Hamburg and I made my way to Sz\u00e9kesfeh\u00e9rv\u00e1r in Hungary to supply materials for the canting keel mechanism that could not be obtained in Hungary. I also tracked down proud Basque Jose Ugarte in Bilbao to provide hands-on support on the boat. I did this out of comradeship and because I had given my word: support in exchange for experience, which seemed like a fair deal at the time (but wouldn’t suit me so much today).\u2028\"\"Thanks to the professionalism of the three skippers, both they and I emerged unscathed. We agreed very quickly that a mechanical windvane self-steering system would never be able to steer a boat of this type reliably. No masts were lost, at least, so my conscience remains clear. One thing I noticed was that almost all the boats carried a large stock of spare autopilots. I recall that Raymarine (at that time still using the Autohelm brand) designed its “GP Series”, which was presumably intended for the most hardcore events, with drive components made from brass rather than the usual plastic \u2013 in an effort to make them withstand the tough conditions slightly longer, perhaps? Various sources reported that the race wiped out autopilot after autopilot after autopilot and that if at least one system reached the finished in a usable state, that was considered a success. The Vend\u00e9e soon came to be recognised as the ultimate proving ground for suppliers willing and able to entertain the requirements and the risks.\u2028\"\"My excursions to Les Sables were highly instructive in any case because they allowed me to discover the practical limits of my mechanical steering slaves. I explain the lessons learned in the process in my books from 1996, 1998 and 2004. Windvane self-steering relies on physics, not magic.\u2028\"\"There is an inevitable temptation to contrast the professionalism of the Vend\u00e9e skippers with what I experienced during the 2018 Golden Globe Race, where some less than entirely professional approaches were compounded by the contribution of a race organiser with an axe to grind. The details are on the record:<\/p>\n

Peter unplugged<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n