A R T I C L E S

French 60 footers rule the OSTAR

Bob Beggs aboard the Dazcat
'Clarkes Active Air' at the
start of the '96 event.

Donald and Diana's trimaran
'Fiery Cross'

Pete Goss takes a Firebird
across in 1988

Trevor Leek helps Donald
prepare Fiery Cross
Plymouth, June 2000



It's easier to climb the mast on
the mooring, a good place to
practice your unassisted technique.


Pre-race in QAB
Europe1 NewMan STAR 2000

So You Want To Do An OSTAR?
by Diana Holder

(originally published in Multihull International magazine)

I've written this with the idea of giving the owners of small multihulls some pointers on preparation, from the point of view of a non-sponsored, relatively inexperienced sailor. I hope it will contribute in a small way to making sure that those who really want to reach the start line, do, and those who start this classic race can finish. I've also looked at things from the point of view of a multihuller, because there are a lot of special factors to be taken into account when preparing these boats.

All you salt-encrusted sea dogs, please forgive the egg sucking lesson! I'm writing this now because I know that somewhere there are a bunch of people planning an OSTAR armed with as little experience as we had three years ago (1998) and if I have suggested anything that is plainly wrong, I hope this will at least kick off an interesting discussion. I refer throughout to the generic race as the OSTAR (because the current race still owes much to the first few events sponsored by the Observer newspaper), but to specific runnings of it by their proper sponsor names.

The Single handed Trans Atlantic Race

The OSTAR, or Transat Anglaise as the French call it, runs every four years from Plymouth, UK to Newport, RI, USA. Last year (2000) any sailor would have to have been living under a stone or stuck on a beach in Fiji with no magazines not to have noticed that the Europe1 New Man STAR was a high profile event with keen competition, major sponsorship, plenty of press attention and detailed Internet coverage, as all the rising solo sailing stars converge to sprint across the Atlantic in June. The huge fleet of 50 and 60 foot monohulls and Formula 1 multihulls could be explained by the fact that this race was at the time the only qualifying event for the Vendee Globe race, which all serious sponsors demand because it gives them a searchlight intensity of publicity in many continental European markets, and is now part of the ORMA 60 foot multihull circuit, but the OSTAR has its own attractions for those with no Vendee or Grand Prix plans.

Along with the sponsored boats comes a fleet of so called Corinthian entries, often older and smaller boats with no sponsor to help with the costs or work to be done, or a severely limited sponsor budget to which skippers often also contribute all they can afford. These sailors often have to set priorities, sternly differentiating between the essential and the desirable, speed enhancement or safety feature, rule compliance or personal preference. It all happens on a much smaller scale than in the big campaigns but the effort represents more personal sacrifices and agonising choices, especially the first time you do this race. So I'm going to tell you, with hindsight of course, the things I've learned from preparing the trimaran Fiery Cross for the Europe1 New Man STAR 2000.

Bitten by the Bug

Donald has long been interested in the OSTAR, perhaps due to the combination of functional boat designs and the psychological toughness required to sail the Atlantic singlehanded, particularly in days when mid-ocean communications were non existent or less reliable. Interest in the OSTAR carries with it an implied strong interest in multihull development, as the race has often been the proving ground for departures in design, the last race won overall by a monohull being 1976. This took root in me after we travelled to Plymouth in June 1996 to see the Europe 1 STAR fleet in their required week-long pre-race period. Captivated by the sight of the 60 foot beauties, both monohull and multihull, cramming Queen Anne's Battery, we wandered the pontoons, took photos, chatted with anyone who seemed to have time to talk, and soaked in the incredible atmosphere of excitement and strong rivalry which was tempered by common respect for the ocean.

Among the gleaming thoroughbreds there were the boats of the smaller classes, also a hive of pre-race activity. We helped out in small ways with Bob Beggs' last fixes on Clarkes Active Air, a 26 foot Dazcat that most people would hesitate to sail across the English Channel. Bob had recently had sponsorship from a major shoe manufacturer for the TwoStar, but our rough estimates of the sums involved were something that we could relate to. Bob is the classic Atlantic solo hard man, and I marvelled that he was going out in such a tiny wet boat, but the value for money the sponsor was getting was completely understandable. Seeing other boats in the fleet which were basically bluewater cruisers with some weight saving and good sails convinced us that this was a race that was still within reach of unsponsored people. This was in sharp contrast to the Transat Jacques Vabre or Route de Rhum where just the minimum LOA and entry fee would dissuade all but those with a large corporate cheque book.

The multihulls of course ranged from the 60 foot Irens rocket machines to Bob's pumped up beach cat, via Trevor Leek's beautiful Nic Bailey 40 tri Mollymawk (ex MTC) and Herve Cleris's Irens 50 tri CLM (later Tenez Bon Les Enfants). These two were real racers but either unsponsored or the sponsor did not have bottomless pockets, which was encouraging.

That week seemed to crystallise a lot of vague notions into a goal to buy a boat and join in the long distance short handed racing scene. Short handed racing appealed, as we had both seen at close quarters the nightmare of organising eight people to go sailing. We had no plans at that stage to buy a multihull but the idea was germinating, watered by Trevor's and Bob's excellent results and helped along by a fair degree of ignorance! In 1997 we bought the 35 foot Owen/Clarke trimaran Fiery Cross, Multihull International May 2000 'cover girl' and familiar to many readers of the magazine. We planned to do a series of races building up to the possibility of Donald doing an OSTAR. To start with, the boat gave us such a steep learning curve and needed so many 'modifications' to be undone, that I doubted that we could get to that stage, but two years later the AZAB gave us such a boost of confidence in the boat that we decided to 'go for it'. This meant everything was now committed to the boat and the race.

Looking back and summarising, in the year 2000 Europe 1 New Man STAR out of 71 starters only 39 boats finished and of those only ten were in Classes 4 and 5; none of these smaller finishers were multihulls. Boats in all classes suffered major damage and gear failure, both well-sponsored Class 1 boats and smaller Corinthian entries.

In brief, Donald started, had to return due to faulty equipment, restarted, and two days out had an irreparable electrical fault, so had to retire from the race. Obviously the disappointment was huge, but after all we had a fantastic sailing summer, found out what we can do if we have to, and we've still got a boat obviously major mistakes were made but we were making some right choices and luck was on our side sometimes. We learned a lot, enjoyed the excitement of being in such a serious fleet, made many good friends and in the end we don't regret it at all, apart from those mistakes in preparation of course!

If you are doing your first OSTAR, unless you are absolutely exceptional in the boat you have, as well as your experience, funding, preparation and talent, it is very unlikely that you can win your class first time so I am concentrating on the ways to maximise your chances of reaching the start line, then finishing the race, learning as much as possible, and finally ending up with a boat to sail afterwards.

Adding our experiences to observation of more successful and experienced competitors, as well as those for whom the problems proved insurmountable, there may be something of value in my suggestions for those with an idea of doing the race in 2004. (Author’s note: the Corinthian smaller class boats will now be racing in 2005 instead, I have fixed the dates below)

To Enter, or Not To Enter?

The OSTAR is run every four years by the Royal Western Yacht Club, the next event being 2005. You have to enter about eight months before the start, by paying a reservation fee of a few hundred pounds; this is a good thing as it means that the Western's fleet management is concentrated on serious entries. You should know by October of the year before, i.e. the end of the summer in 2004, whether you and your boat and your finances will be ready for June the following year. In fact you will probably know by the end of the summer before that, 2003, whether you are going to be able to 'go for it', and you should try to make any serious structural changes required in that winter.

Unfortunately some of the things you have to do to get the boat and yourself ready (spend time sailing your boat, have a practice run at complying with a rigorous set of rules, sail in a long offshore race, complete the qualifying cruises and perhaps make structural and gear alterations to the boat) directly work against the third corner of the triangle, the family finances. You need to think about this now for the next OSTAR, because if you don't, the conflict produced can be a source of extreme stress precisely where you don't need it in the last weeks before the start in your shore crew. For unsponsored boats, this is your mates, your partner, your parents, your children. Donald is always saying that the only single handed part of the race is between Plymouth and Newport, and I would agree, except that that time is also very stressful for the families who often have to organise things for the other end and deal with communication problems.

In general I would say it is beyond the scope of all but the most energetic and determined individual to get to the start line without some help. So to steal a phrase from management jargon, you need complete 'buy in' to the effort from at least one other person, and this should probably be your partner or a family member. Even if they are not going to be down the boatyard every weekend October to March putting backing plates on the deckhead under all your reefing block attachments, or redoing the trampoline attachments, they are probably going to partly finance the effort, make many economies and sacrifices because of your lost earnings, do without your help in other matters, do without a lot of fun sailing while the boat is not around, wash your fibreglass infested work clothes, sort out your insurance, and drive a carload of stuff to Plymouth for race preparation.

As to whether the skipper can combine race preparation with amassing a cushion of money, I'll tell a cautionary tale. Donald was working until four weeks before the start and it turned out to be a very bad idea, seriously interfering with the last bits of preparation and delivery. We relaunched with little time to spare, parts didn't arrive on time and he was in no position to chase them up or check on work. In the end he had to go to Plymouth in strong winds with genoa furling gear still in the throes of teething trouble, and started race week absolutely exhausted and with a 'birdcaged' forestay to replace. Everything was OK in the end but it was only by the grace of God and the long working hours of rigger Antony Boalch. As it turned out the money put by was enough, but another year of saving would have helped make Donald's multitasking unnecessary.

I've already gone into what led up to Donald's entry in the 2000 race and described the deep questions you must ask, and long plans you must make, to decide whether you really want to enter in the first place. Now follows more detail of the commitment required, and some reminders of problems you must solve sooner rather than later. Some of this will seem terribly obvious but is intended to give a warts-and-all account of the problems of preparation for a serious ocean race.

The First Race is the One to the Start Line

To avoid the possibility of running out of preparation time you will need to start planning for the next OSTAR now. You will need to allow about six or seven months over the final two years of you not working. In addition to practice, take into account a 1000 nm crewed qualifying passage, preparation, a 500 nm single handed qualifying passage [Author’s note: please check current entry and qualification requirements for the 2005 edition], time spent on the search for a sponsor, work on the boat, delivery to Plymouth, the race itself, recovery time and possible repairs to make in Newport, and delivery back again; some of this period will involve both of you in time off work. Then you will probably have to spend extra money on equipment for the boat. There is the balance of the entry fee to find, and you need to make sure there is a bit more in the pot in case you end up with a broken boat in the Azores, or a last minute breakage presents you with an unexpected bill. Get at least one credit card as clear as possible to get you home in an emergency. Also remember that it may be hard to persuade a normal employer to give you that much time off, even unpaid, so you may end up chucking in your job. You may decide it is easier to fit in time off if you are freelancing, and it takes time to make the leap and regain your earning power. This whole process can be very stressful, so spread the load; it is also perhaps helpful to think of this race as practice for the next OSTAR, when you will be an 'old hand' at the pre race tasks, and thus more competitive.

It's best if there are a few friends you can persuade to join in with preparation. The one thing guaranteed about the work list you write when you put the boat on the hard in winter 2003/4 (and probably again in 2004/5) is that it will get longer before it gets shorter, and it's important to pick as many brains as possible when you have a tricky problem of work time vs cost vs speed vs safety. It's not all grime, cold and toil for your helpers, however you also need help with the sailing preparation, so try to take some experienced multihullers offshore at some point. The season before the race, i.e. 2004, you should do a lot of short handed sailing, and try to work out systems for effecting manoeuvres single handed. The mechanics of getting in and out of marinas and off and onto moorings, especially with a multihull, mean that it is less stressful to have a second person at least while you are getting in your practice.

You also need to get lots of miles under the daggerboard on top of the required 1000 miles of crewed qualifying passages, preferably in a wide range of weather conditions. A great way to do this (and have a good time) is to do an AZAB two-handed race, and look on it as singlehanding with backup, ironing out problems in order to qualify later; or you could use the AZAB as your qualifier, if you are ready, by doing at least one of the legs singlehanded, or in the rest week in Ponta Delgada go singlehanding round Flores and get an independent third party to sign your logbook. [Author’s note: the AZAB used to be conveniently situated in the year before the OSTAR, and acted as a ready-made qualifier opportunity. Now that the small-class STAR has been put back a year, this is now two seasons before the STAR and has now passed by. Fortunately there are other races which can act as a qualifier, for example the Kinsale-Gijon leg of the PB2004 singlehanded race in July 2004]

Competitors from across the Pond have an additional headache delivery to Plymouth for the start and leaving enough time to make good any damage from the passage. March is probably not a good time for a delivery, so if you can bring it over in 2004 before hurricane season, or send it as deck cargo, it may be a lot less worrying. Or why not sail to the Azores via Bermuda in May/June 2003, send your crew home from Ponta Delgada (flying direct to Boston, Mass.), coincide with the return leg of the AZAB 2003 and complete the singlehanded qualification with the additional security of a race fleet? [Author’s note: the AZAB has now happened as at March 2004, I can only suggest now that US boats could bedelivered via the Azores and if there is time, joining in with the Atlantis Cup Race and Horta Sea Week at the beginning of August would make this a fantastic trip]

How I Learnt to Stop Worrying and Love the Rules

A major part of preparation is to do with getting the boat to comply with the race rules, all the more so if it has never been in an OSTAR before but don't assume, because you bought a boat that won its class in a previous OSTAR, that you will automatically pass scrutineering. Rules change and the rules for the OSTAR are made to fit into existing rules covering single handed and crewed races and are a superset of the ORC special regulations, so when they change, the OSTAR rules perforce change too. Changes have occurred in the past in areas of minimum and maximum LOA, safety equipment, communications, propulsion, power supply, number and size of watertight compartments and the stability of monohulls. This could affect your choice of boat: for example, if you are thinking of buying a boat between 30 and 35 feet specifically for this race, perhaps check with the RWYC that they have no plans to set a new higher minimum LOA for the 2005 edition.

When you get your copy of the rules in late 2003, you and your boat should be broadly prepared; but, bearing in mind that the devil is in the details, go through it and make three lists: Now; Before Launching; and Before the Start. You have to take into account dependencies, supply lead time; work time; booking the guy to do the work if you can't do it yourself; whether it can be done when afloat; and the weather, particularly for paint and fibreglass. If you plan to do anything like spray painting the entire boat or un-stepping the rig, check this is OK with the yard in good time to avoid a change in plans; an unshared crane hire fee, or having to move the boat part painted. If you need new sails (any excuse eh!) try negotiating a cut price deal with the sailmaker if you are prepared to order when they are less busy, ie outside February April in the northern hemisphere. Offshore multihull sails are different to offshore monohull sails, so you should ask around to see who has made fast heavy duty sails for any other multihulls you know; but remember they are probably equally in demand to make sails for Open design boats, so ask early! Quite apart from saving money, this way you can help ensure you get your sails in good time.

Getting insurance is always hard for those with a non-production boat and for multihullers, so do this early on. If you have a one-off multihull third party cover is obligatory and the organisers understandably require a certificate before allowing you to race. Nearly anyone will do the 3rd party cover but for comprehensive cover you may find the hull and especially the rig to be a problem. One large insurer's representative actually laughed out loud when we told him our requirement, but luckily we were able to find something more flexible.

Remember that in the spring a skipper's fancy lightly turns to thoughts of the liferaft certificate, and the servicing companies have such a mad rush in March that it's worth getting it done in December to avoid a delay of weeks right when you should be out practising. This is especially important anywhere within 30 miles of the Hamble.

Some rules put a disproportionate cost burden on smaller boats and budgets. For example, communications and position reporting rules were a cost problem for us and after a rule change we ended up buying an Inmarsat system in spite of having a perfectly good SSB radio, so that the position reporting could be done without human intervention directly to the website race map of current positions for all the boats. This did not work for all boats because of a delay setting up the units on France Telecom's polling system. It is probably better not to rely on the supplier being able to set up thirty boats in the last three days before race start, so get this configured well in advance. Among those for whom the challenge is a personal thing and who are not relying on press coverage to please a sponsor, position reporting may not be very important, but it is a feature of modern races and a requirement in the rules as well as being useful for families on shore, so it's best to just accept that and allow for it in the budget.

Maximise your chances of finishing

I am advising you to imagine the worst case scenario and to prepare for it, and to remember the punishing effect on the skipper of three weeks in a small, wet boat.

This last OSTAR had some very bad weather, and examination of the US Atlantic Pilot tells us that you are practically guaranteed at least a gale at some point on your crossing. Most of us doing coastal sailing in our multihulls avoid this kind of thing most of the time, but obviously in mid Atlantic you can't. Nearly all the smaller boats suffered damage of one kind or another, some had important gear failure. Obviously you are racing and you can't take a spare everything (you can't tow a spare yacht behind you!), but you may find yourself thinking that some rules don't provide enough of the safety factor; perhaps think of the race rules as providing the lower limit of safety requirements, and it is up to you what you carry over and above the minimum. This is even more true for multihulls where the behaviour in normal or severe weather may be totally different to a monohull of similar length.

For instance, many people say that a small, light multihull cannot safely lie ahull in a storm: read Adlard Coles Heavy Weather Sailing (5th ed., Peter Bruce) and relevant chapters of Total Loss (Jack Coote) so you will need to keep sailing in all conditions, unless you subscribe to the view of holding the bow down lying to a parachute anchor which could be lost through chafe or overloading so maybe you need a spare, even if the rules do not stipulate one. If you believe in keeping sailing, you should think about what kind of weather will make it necessary to turn and run, and then what you will do if you are running before 50 kt, burying the front half of the boat or becoming airborne between wave tops, and have to slow the boat down. Read the Drag Device Database for ideas on the different characteristics of devices you might try, bearing in mind the strain a large towed object will place on the attachment points for example, Fiery Cross's through bolted runner chainplates are not designed to take a load backwards out of the beam, so we have heavy strops round each rear beam and planned on streaming long warps from these in order to run obliquely downwind. Rig the attachment points before the start, or at least before the weather gets horrible, to minimise time outside the cockpit. Ask anyone you know who has sailed a light boat in heavy weather what worked and what didn't. Watch that film of Enza speeding under a scrap of sail towards her Jules Verne record trailing hundreds of metres of warps and only slightly slowed by it all. Give yourself the willies about this now, and with luck you won't need to deal with the really fearful situation.

Similarly, a light multihull which has to keep sailing cannot be hand steered for three weeks and is too mercurial for a windvane self steering system you need a wheelpilot or tillerpilot, the faster and heavier duty the better. You can't afford to have this fail as you will not be able to lash up a lo-tech replacement as on some monohulls the way a multihull sails, its rapid accelerations and transient changes in direction due to wave action on a light boat, will change the apparent wind speed and angle and the boat will be very difficult to balance by lashing the helm with bungy. You really need your autopilots and their power supply to be 100% reliable. Donald had to return and restart because of bad soldering in two of his three brand new tillerpilot units, a real 'horseshoe nail' of a failure which thorough testing of those units could have prevented.

By extension your battery power must be unimpeachable. Having tried solar panels and found that they are destroyed in a season by being positioned on the floats of a trimaran, I am reluctantly coming round to the idea of a small petrol generator, but again there is a weight penalty which may be unacceptable. New batteries will provide additional reassurance We hand steered two handed all the way to the Azores in the AZAB last year (1999) when our batteries failed on the first night and were slow as a result.

In a wet boat corrosion is constantly threatening your electrical wiring. For really vital systems like your autopilots, consider replacing the power supply and Seatalk wiring whether they need it or not, in case you have the same problem that eventually made Donald retire from the race a power supply wire that was tested as OK in pre-start checks rapidly corroded over the first two days following re-start and failed, so the poor bloke had to hand steer 28 hours back to Falmouth. Installing a whole spare switch, power supply wire and socket might be a good idea too.

The other problem in a wet boats is keeping the skipper dry enough. Donald has the Musto drysuit and it is a wonderful piece of kit, though not terribly practical for singlehanding unless the weather is very bad or you are going to have to sort something out on the foredeck. If you do use a drysuit make sure you can get it undone by yourself! A hook on a bulkhead and a short extension to the zip tug loop works OK with practice, but to avoid damage to the clothes underneath and catastrophic (think about it!) zip jamming, get someone to watch you do it and tell you what to pull when and at what angle, until you get the knack.

If you decide on separate oilskins, it is well worth shelling out the extra money for Gore-Tex, so your middle layer and underlayer will remain drier. Even with Gore-Tex, after so many days at sea skin problems can result, and I recommend Sudocrem antiseptic nappy rash cream if this becomes a problem. Dry thermals are not dry for long once you put them on but you can avoid the horror of getting into cold wet things by using roll top 'dry bags' when you pack we have twelve of various manufacture and have found the Guy Cotten ones to be most hard-wearing, an important feature on a rough trip. 'Vacuum bagging' packing items of clothing into individual Ziploc bags and crushing the air out before sealing the bag helps to save space in the dry bags.

The Inner Man (or Woman)

Energy requirements are high for a race which can be 'nasty, brutish and long', and in rough weather feeding the skipper correctly is a challenge; cooking is difficult in any racing boat and in a multihull in big weather you may have trouble keeping the pan on the stove. A solution beloved of hardcore singlehanders is to weld a small kettle to the top part of a single camping gaz burner, so that you only ever boil water, and to have a diet consisting of individual bagged dehydrated 'just add water' meals. These are now pretty palatable, though pricey, but other multihullers have found them to be a bit small and ended up eating two bags at a time. We used the 'Regal Raven Outdoor Cuisine' brand, but there are several others out there so taste in advance. They don't weigh much and have the added advantage for a small boat of taking up very little space and generating minimal trash. If you decide to keep your conventional cooker and can't stomach the freeze dried food, have some things that can be cooked in seconds like instant mashed potato (flavoured ones are not too bland) and instant noodles (we found pot noodles to be too 'plasticky' but the ones that come in a small block are OK). It's all 'chacun á son gôut' as long as you have something you can eat for three weeks in any conditions.

Aerial Antics

At some point in your race, you may have to climb the mast unassisted, and in a multihull this presents different challenges the motion is often more violent, particularly if the sail is down, and climbing is thus more difficult. We know people who shin up and down using prussic loops but in a seaway this may not be reliable enough. The best thing to do is practice go up and down in a variety of conditions whenever possible during preparation, see what makes you feel just about safe enough. Jumars can be reassuring and an abseiling slider is good too this last is very important to practice with because pulling the string on the side lets it slide down, not a good thing to grab in panic!

Live to Fight Another Day

The OSTAR can take on a central, all-consuming importance in your life so it is important to remember that at the very least you would probably like to still have the boat and yourself in one piece afterwards!

You are bound to notice, as we did, that there are some rules which seem to ignore the existence of smaller multihulls in the race fleet. Most important to consider are rules which you feel may reduce your safety; our particular bugbear was the requirement for an inboard diesel engine. After discussion with the Royal Western this was eventually waived for multihulls in our class, but was something that would have significantly increased Fiery Cross's weight and in consequence reduced the percentage buoyancy of her floats not what you want in a storm situation.

My advice would be: think about each rule, think about how you want your boat to be in severe weather, and if compliance with the rule militates against that safety requirement, raise it with the race committee earlier rather than later, and talk to MOCRA about ways to achieve an acceptable ruling. If it is merely a question of carrying a dan buoy, you might think 'well who's going to throw it to me?' but race committees are naturally keen to err on the side of safety, and you have to bear in mind the crewed delivery trip back are you going to buy all new safety equipment to stand in for the stuff you left in the shed at home? Especially where you feel your boat will be less competitive by complying with a rule, it is galling, but it is not going to be possible to get changes made for lots of little things. Save your persuasive efforts for the important problems.

Think about what could happen if you have to retire from the race after you leave the English Channel have charts for the French and Iberian peninsula west coast, the Azores, Ireland, and Newfoundland including pilotage information for the harbours. Irish information is in the Macmillan almanac, as are the French, Spanish and Portuguese mainland harbours, but the Azores are not included. In Horta this summer we happened to be listening on Ch16 one morning and we heard an engineless single hander calling from the Pico Channel, not knowing the harbourmaster's working channel or the fact that he could not transmit back to the sailor on Ch16, and without a chart to get in. Sorting out a tow with the harbourmaster took us some time, stressful for the skipper but luckily a safe result. At 2 am in a less busy place in big weather you may have less luck.

If you know you don't have time to deliver the boat back yourself, you will need a delivery crew. There will be a shortage of these so to get a good sailor booked early! A possible source of those who want to rack up ocean miles, maybe even single handed if you are OK about it, is the ever-growing fleet of prospective Mini Transat skippers. The boats they sail are small and brutally wet as well as being fast and having huge sail areas, so they may well already have a good understanding of multihull sailing ideas. Remember too that hurricane season is well underway by August, you would be unwise to plan to leave Rhode Island any later than that.

You Are Not Alone

During preparation, try to get in touch with the other competitors. This is easy using email, and I set up an email list for the Class V boats. It meant we could get better prices for some things by buying in bulk, some of the members were very experienced and had good advice, information was pooled saving some research time (about insurance and communications), and it was a great source of moral support seeing that everyone else was encountering and overcoming problems too. It meant that when we reached Plymouth, we may not have known everyone by sight but it was like meeting up with a bunch of old friends once we'd put the names to the faces. After the first wave of entrants have paid their deposit, and at various times from then onwards, the Royal Western sends out a provisional entry list, typically quite long, and this is your means of getting in contact with other sailors. The Western kindly let us use one of these mailings to send out my email address in order to attract members for the email list.

If you have to decide to cease preparations and withdraw your entry before the start, you can bet that everyone else who is entered will sympathise, many may have thought about having to do this, and several of them may have done the same in previous races. One esteemable third-time OSTAR entrant described a 'sudden attack of common sense' which caused him to withdraw, nevertheless it was upsetting for him at the time and the moral support of the other entrants must have been a help.

Give a little thought, you supporters and shore crew, to the mental health of the skipper once he has started racing. It may seem that every ounce matters but I know even from double handing that small luxuries can become much more important when you are cold and wet (as anyone will be on a fast multihull taking a northern or rhumb line route) and this effect has to be intensified when alone. The best-prepared skipper can have low points and the first few days after departure can be a rollercoaster of emotion and mood. So pack a small surprise bag of treats to be opened only after a week at sea. Donald's was an unexpected gift from Andy Parritt and included Belgian chocolates, a shaving kit plus aftershave, tot of whisky, and a short motivational message!

Given the likely state of satellite communications technology in four years' time, you will have the capability to send and receive email on the boat or even have affordable satellite phone calls mid ocean. More traditionally, depending on boat positions, you may also have a SSB radio schedule with other racers. I can't overemphasise the importance of this for the mental well-being of some skippers. Cruising back from the Azores in September 2000 we had a radio schedule with German friends who were following after us and even for double handers, it was a real treat to hear his voice every day, giving us news of whales and weather and the three course meals they were eating! Some may wish for the total isolation of the first edition of the race, but for most, communication is the high point of the day, so don't forget to arrange your schedule or swap email names and sat phone numbers. If you are going to have ship to shore email, make sure you know this works in advance, and what times of day it will be sent.

If in the end you withdraw your entry or have to retire after the start, it helps to have a fallback plan. You might want to sail your way out of the disappointment this will naturally bring, or may have a plan for any saved money this will make you feel better about it all. Our answer was to go sailing two-handed to the Azores, take a cruise to other islands, take our friends sailing, enter some short inter island races, eat much fish and drink much wine, and stay there until we were nearly broke! It was marvellous fun and the only thing to do at the time to assuage the hurt of crushed dreams and get some relaxation after all that stress; maybe we should have taken the money we’d saved for air fare and time off, and made it form the start of the next OSTAR fund, but sometimes you have to say what the hell, we'll know better next time, meanwhile let's go sailing.

[Author’s note: This was originally printed in Multihull International magazine and I am grateful for their help in allowing me to re-use the article. I wrote it in the winter following the Europe 1 New Man STAR in 2000, and it was published in March 2001. Because of this timing I referred originally to the next edition of the OSTAR as being three years hence in 2004. Since then the small boat classes have had their race moved to 2005. Therefore I have added a note of the year referred to in brackets to clarify, as if I had known about the 2005 race back then. Otherwise I’ve left it more or less as it was, correcting only some irritating written style points. Maybe if I was writing the same article from scratch now, I would have written it very differently. I leave it mostly unchanged because it was written while everything was very fresh in my mind and I do not want to disturb the emphasis retrospectively.]

Diana Holder