A R T I C L E S

A Coaching Session from a Figaro Pro
by Pascal Desmarets

We now have 5 Figaro 2 in Belgium. All are owned by successful businessmen in their early 40's, but so far, I've been the only one racing my Figaro. We are all enthusiastic sailing amateurs with various degrees of experience, various degrees of racing ambition, various degrees of tolerance for pain...

After my disappointing result in the Solitaire 2004, I told the other owners that with a few pointers from a pro, I felt that huge improvements could be made. But how would I do that without benchmarking? All the front-runners in the fleet train together all winter long in Port-la-Foret (Southern Brittany), the famous French school of solo racing. They learn from each other, do speed tests, are followed by coaches, etc. Could we not create a mini-Port-la-Foret in Belgium? We'd call it "Nieuwpoort-la-Foret" (4 of the 5 boats are based in Nieuwpoort.)

We had originally asked Michel Desjoyeaux to coach us. He had accepted (Jean Englebert, the Belgian Beneteau dealer and owner of one of the Figaro's, sailed on Cote d'Or with Michel in the mid-eighties and made the arrangements), then we could never coordinate schedules, so he suggested Jean-Luc Nelias. Jean-Luc is 44 years old and grew up in Port-la-Foret with Michel Desjoyeaux, Jean Le Cam, and Roland Jourdain as his best friends. All of them played on sailboats and in Michel's dad's boatyard instead of going to school. All of them ended up making a living racing sailboats by the time they were 20. Jean-Luc's career peak was in the late 1990's and early 2000's when he became skipper of the Orma 60 tri "Belgacom" (first the Fujicolor of Loick Peyron, then a brand new tri by VPLP.) After Belgacom canceled the sponsoring, Jean-Luc did a Figaro season in 2004, finishing the season and the Solitaire in the top 10. Both with his trimaran, and last year in his Figaro, Jean-Luc was a "student" in Port-la-Foret.

We had booked Jean-Luc for a 3-day session (for a fee that we shared.) Only 4 Figaro's participated as the last one had just arrived from the factory 2 days before and still needed to be rigged. The weather cooperated, with light winds the first day (8-12), medium (10-18) the 2nd day, and 20-30 the last day. Just perfect as we were coming up the learning curve.

Mornings were spent in the classroom, afternoons on the water, evenings fixing and tuning the boats, then off to the restaurant. There was one major difference with the program of the pros: we drank wine at dinner and skipped the early morning session at the gym!

Morning sessions: Jean-Luc started with his basic philosophies for racing around the buoys: TRAJECTORY should be the first priority, followed by PROPULSION, then MANOEUVRES. Of course all 3 are somewhat tied to each other, but the hierarchy should be maintained. Over the course of the morning sessions we reviewed video footage and pictures from the previous day, discussed sail trim in various conditions, and decomposed all types of manoeuvers. We learned for example the sequence of steps and all the tricks to do end-to-end pole gybes solo in 30 knots of breeze (e.g.: what marks to make on the spinnaker sheets and afterguys.) We also learned the sequence for gybes in less than 18 knots -- it's completely different. Jean-Luc's style is great. He's sharp, very didactic, fun, and able to critique without offending anyone. He's obviously full of experience and stories, with his quarter century of pro racing.

Afternoon sessions: we packed a lunch and took the boats out. Jean-Luc was equipped with 3 inflatable buoys, a GPS, a wind indicator, and a VHF, plus a waterproof camcorder and digital still camera. Ideally, he should have been assisted by a zodiac driver, because driving, filming, and coaching at the same time is not the best. He set an upwind/downwind course (with a dog-leg to give ourselves time to setup the spinnaker at the upwind mark), starting with 2-mile legs, and shortening down to 1-mile legs as we got around the course better. We would start the session by a couple of laps to warm up. Then we'd gather up and do a half-dozen practice starts. We would finish the day with a race, a couple of laps then back to the harbor. Inevitably, everyone would miss a manoeuver here or there, but you learn by your mistakes. Jean-Luc would follow and film one boat at a time, and give tips on handling and sail trim. For myself, one single rigging adjustment resulted in 15% upwind speed improvement, and solved interrogations I had been having for a couple of years!

Evening sessions: beers, chips and salsa at the dock, steak and wine at the club. Jean-Luc was horrified by our diet. Oh well, we're amateurs after all, and made no apologies. While I had integrated all the rigging tricks for my deck and cockpit that I had observed on the Figaro circuit the last 2 years, Jean-Luc had a few more which we implemented right away. Every little detail helps when sailing solo.

Everyone in the group was very keen on repeating the experience again. If we didn't know it already, these 3 days emphasized a few things: you can shortcut the learning curve a great deal by getting a few tricks from the pros; there's no substitute for practice; and... the more you learn, the more you realize that there's much more to learn! Unfortunately, we're all back to the office ;-(

Pascal