“Wrong Way” VDH Update–Last Cape, Coming Up: Jean Luc Van Den Heede is now more than 90 days into his bid to set a new record for circumnavigating the globe solo and non-stop against the prevailing winds. And TWC reckons his voyage is just about as remarkable as Mon. Joyon’s. VDH is now a stunning 24 days ahead of the previous record holder, Philippe Monnet. Joyon smashed the solo “right way” record by about 20 days but he was sailing in a fast trimaran against a record put up by a slower monohull. Monnet sailed in a monohull and VDH is crushing the record in a monohull. No one has ever yet been insane enough to sail a multihull the “wrong way” around the world non-stop, because sailing a multihull into the prevailing winds would be one of the most exquisite tortures ever devised by man. But you know what? It will happen…and sooner rather than later because it is one of the only remaining great Firsts in the world of sailing records. Anyhow, if VDH keeps up his current pace–and he is about to round the Cape of Good Hope and turn north up the Atlantic–he may kick the westabout record as far out of reach as Joyon just kicked the eastabout record. Here are VDH’s thoughts on how he is doing compared to Monnet, despite some recent bad weather:

That hasn’t stopped us eating away bit by bit at Philippe Monnet’s time. I should remind you that he left from Brest in early January hoping to go far down south and pick up some favourable winds close to the Antarctic. He was stopped by the ice, which meant that he found himself off the Cape of Good Hope in early May, which is far from being the ideal period. He reached there the same time as a deep depression, which really slowed him down and forced him to shelter off Port Elisabeth for 25 hours. So tonight as I pass by this port I’ll get another 25 hours added to my lead, while I’m asleep!

I mean, being half-asleep, as with the oilrigs, the cargo ships, fishermen and whales, I have to keep one eye open!

What an incredible round-the-world record-breaking season this is. First Joyon, now VDH. Next up Fossett and DeKersauson, and possibly Jules Verne pioneer Bruno Peyron in a brand new 120-foot catamaran (more on that later)…..



“Smell you later, Monnet, I’ve just got one measly ocean to go before I’m home…..”

(Red: VDH; Blue: Monnet)

Cheyenne Update–Code Green…Finally: Steve Fossett and his 125-foot monstercat “Cheyenne” have been on stand-by since December for the right weather window to launch their Jules Verne round-the-globe record attempt. With his crew running up a huge bar tab in Plymouth’s pubs, as they await a start in the English Channel, Fossett has finally spotted a weather pattern which he thinks will be good enough for a start Friday. So he’s taking it. Cheyenne will leave the dock shortly to slog her way through 120 miles of stormy English Channel, facing headwinds up to 50-knots, to arrive at the Jules Verne start line at Le Stiff lighthouse on the French island of Ouessant (Ushant). From there, Cheyenne is staring at a 21,760 mile race track (probably closer to 25,000 miles since JV boats rarely get to sail the most direct route, as they look for optimum wind angles). The first leg will take her and her 13-person crew (navigator Adrienne Cahalan is the sole woman aboard) from the Channel to the Equator, via the notorious Bay of Biscay, and Fossett will be hoping to knock that off in under 9 days. This is going to be a hell of a record attempt to follow, so stand by for regular TWC updates. No word yet on whether Olivier De Kersauson and his 120-foot trimaran “Geronimo” likes the window Fossett has chosen enough to join the party. I hope he will, because seeing these two multihulls go head to head would be the match race of the decade…..



Cheyenne at Speed: “Ohhh, Olivier, won’t you come out and PLAAAAAAAY……..”

(Photo: DPPI / Christophe Baudry)

Wetass Photo Archive–Kickass Catfish: It must be wacky photo week. I keep seeing ’em, so I keep posting ’em…..



“Hurry up and take the damn picture! I think I just saw this pup’s Daddy swimming by…”

Annals of Emigration–It’s a Buick…It’s a Boat: The dream of freedom–or the frustration and pain of oppression–can juice the human spirit to creative extremes. So, imagine you are stuck in Castro’s Cuba. You are entrepreneurial, lust for a better life, and the old bastard…just…won’t…die. What do you do? You cast your eyes toward the 90 miles of open ocean that separates you from the modern Gomorrah otherwise known as Key West, and you start looking for a vessel to get you there. Sometimes it’s a dinghy, sometimes it’s a a few slats of wood slapped together with rusty nails and a prayer, and sometimes–if you are a mechanical genius–it’s a 1959 Buick. So imagine the surprise of the U.S. Coast Guard, when they came upon Luis Grass and 10 others “motoring” their way across the Florida Strait in a lime-green coupe. TWC would offer the group a “Wetass visa,” a free pass into the U.S. for demostrated courage and creativity. I mean, Grass and his buds took a 45-year-old car, sealed its doors, slapped on a double-bottom, a steel plate bow and a propeller…and even managed to use the original V8 as a motor. They drove the thing straight off a beach, and headed north. The US needs people like this. Let ’em in. Particularly since this was Grass’ second attempt. Last year, he modified a pick-up truck by strapping oil drums to it, and set off. But no…the U.S. Coast Guard has no sense of humor, no admiration for the exceptional, and a fear of bending any rules. What did they do? They sank the Buick. But don’t worry, Grass will be back next year…maybe in a TransAm?



“Punch it, Dude, these f*cking Federales have no appreciation for classic cars…..”

(Photo: Reuters)

Just Who the Hell is Francis Joyon, And What Is He Made Of?: The Daily Sail. an excellent subscription sailing web site (which is well worth the price) has the answers, in this illuminating piece on the solo record holder’s background:

Central to Joyon’s character is that he is a product of France’s most famous sailing school – les Glenans – alongside the likes of Jean-Luc van den Heede. The Glenans has influenced many many French sailors promoting seamanship first and foremost, the KISS principle (keep it simple, stupid) and a heightened affinity and understanding of their environment – the sea. Glenans sailors can be recognised as the ones who know how to scull a dinghy and who like to sail on to their mooring (marina berths are also not in the Glenans philosophy).

Bitten by the sailing bug, even when he returned home to Epernon, southwest of Paris, Joyon was motivated enough to build his own boat – a 9m long cold moulded monohull in which he took his family cruising to Africa and South America.

His appetite for racing came about in the 1980s when he witnessed a multihull grand prix in Martinique. Suitably enthused he bought the hulls of the old Elf Aquitaine catamaran, rerigged it and campaigned her as JB Express in the 1988 Route of Discovery race, finishing a respectible third.

He subsequently befriended the late 60ft trimaran skipper Paul Vatine with whom he raced in the 1989 Round Europe Race. This trip on board the 60ft Irens trimaran Region Haute Normandie inspired Joyon to have a crack at singlehanded offshore racing himself. Without a sponsor he bought the yellow Adrian Thompson-designed 60ft trimaran Paragon and raced her to 10th place in the 1990 Route du Rhum. He followed this up with a series of third place finishes in the 1992 OSTAR, the Route du Cafe (predecessor to the Transat Jacques Vabre) and the Round Europe Race, sailing one of the oldest boats in the fleet.

Having proved his worth Joyon was sponsored by Banque Populaire and was able to build a new boat – another Nigel Irens design and a sistership, albeit a cheaper lower-tech version, to probably the most successful 60ft trimaran ever – Loick Peyron’s Fujicolor. In this Joyon continues to finish on the podium or in the top five, although never actually winning. But as time wore on, he also was becoming increasingly unhappy with the professional sportsman lifestyle that sponsorship from the French bank was placing him in and in 1999 there was a parting of the ways. Banque Populaire chose Lalou Roucayrol as their new skipper and had a new Marc Lombard-designed trimaran built for him.

The defining moment for Joyon came during the 2000 Europe 1 New Man STAR. As all the glamorous ORMA trimarans fleet lay shimmering in Plymouth’s Queen Anne’s Battery Marina, a small army of shore crew on each, Joyon’s slightly grubby white trimaran painted in the colours of his new but modest sponsor Eure et Loir lay on a mooring off Mountbatten with Joyon alone working on board her.

It was thus with utter satisfaction that Joyon went on to demolish the opposition in this race achieving his first major win and his place in the history books. Meanwhile Banque Populaire suffered a capsize and was abandoned mid-Atlantic on her first race. Joyon and Eure et Loir have also competed in the UK, setting a new course record for the Round the Island Race and were first home in the 2001 Fastnet Race.

Racing with Joyon on both these occasions was British triple Olympic medallist Rodney Pattisson. Since Joyon bought Paragon off him the two have become close friends and Pattisson holds the utmost respect for the Joyon. To prove this Pattisson was in Brest for Joyon’s arrival today and as the Frenchman stepped ashore Pattisson presented him with the gold medal he had won in the Flying Dutchman at the Munich Olympics.

“I felt that what he’d done was so magnificent,” Pattisson told thedailysail afterwards. “In my sport I’ve always felt the Olympic Gold medal was the pinnacle of success, but I don’t think it is compared with something like this. So when he came ashore I presented him with my Kiel gold medal and said ‘look Francis, you deserve this for what you’ve done and I want you to keep it’. He wore it at the press conference. I think he was pleased with the gesture and I felt it was the least I could do. I was honoured I could give it to him.

“It couldn’t have happened to a more deserving man. You’ll never find a more modest and kinder guy and a lovely family man with a delightful wife and kids who he adores. He smashed the record and it will be very very difficult for anyone to beat it. He deserves to hold it for many years to come.”

On board a boat Pattisson describes Joyon as being a superb seaman “and very experienced and that’s important. He’s an absolute gorilla – he is so strong, yet he’s not that heavy – only 14 or 15 stone.”

Perhaps a most important characteristic for sailing big powerful multihulls singlehanded offshore, Pattisson says he is ‘panic-less’. “A crisis isn’t a crisis to Francis. If anyone can sort it – he can. He is a superb diver. I will always remember when he turned Banque Populaire over when he was winning the 1996 OSTAR off Newfoundland. He took a lift off the boat and came back with a fishing boat and he salvaged her himself. He dived, got the rig off, filled up a float and righted her. No one else would have done that. Anyone else would have wrecked her trying to do anything.

“And when he turned over Eure et Loir in the Route du Rhum [in 2002], he was three days on that boat waiting to get a tow in and refusing to pay certain prices. Three days upside down in those horrible conditions. Other people would have just got off the boat and left it to the sponsor to sort out.”

In that race once again Joyon was among the frontrunners, despite having one of the oldest boats, without the latest curved foils, with no canting wingmast, a smaller sail area, etc. “He was winning the race because he was the underdog and had to fight harder than anyone else,” says Pattisson.

Joyon is 47 years old and unlike many of the younger more technically-inclined trimaran sailors, he is more a belt and braces man. “I will always remember, when he brought Eure et Loire over and I joined him on the Friday afternoon and went on board and he was fiddling around down below and I said ‘we ought to put the waypoints in for round the island tomorrow’ and he said ‘oh, I suppose we ought to’. And he started trying to put them in with the greatest of difficulty,” recounts Pattisson. “And I said ‘what is the total mileage?’ and he said ‘I don’t know how to do that…'” So I asked him – he’d just won the OSTAR – ‘how did you win the OSTAR, how did you get to Newport?’ And he said ‘it was dead easy – I only needed to put in two waypoints…'”



“Ahhh……….”

Wetass Photo of the Week–Climber’s Hand: Clearly, a dedicated Rock Rat….Ouch!



(Photo: courtesy of Bouldering.Info)

Peak Lenin Tragedy–Snow Leopard Down: TWC loves climbers from the former Soviet Union. They are skilled alpinists, they love to talk (and drink), and they are always doing crazy sh*t, like driving a Land Rover up Nanga Parbat (and then trying to drive it down….whoops). Three years ago a group of climbers at the Center of Mountaineering Training for Rescuers and Guides were a little bored and a little restless, and they decided to revive the grand Soviet alpine tradition of the Snow Leopards. The idea is simple: climb all the mountains in the former Soviet Union above 7,000 meters…in winter. That’s the beauty of these guys. There’s always a twist, a twist that makes the challenge more difficult, more rewarding, and simply more interesting. In the winter of 2001-2002 the new Snow Leopards pulled off a traverse of the 7010 meter Khan Tegri peak. And this winter they planned an assault on Peak Lenin, at 7134 meters. Dodging avalanche danger and overcoming illness, the 9 climbers on the expedition stood atop Peak Lenin on February 1. But on the descent–it’s so often the descent–they lost climber Daniyar Mynzhysarov in the dark. A desperate search ensued, but it was not until the late morning that his body was found at 6200 meters with apparent craniocereberal trauma (massive head wound?). The team is continuing down, carrying their dead. Unfortunately, Snow Leopards, like cats, don’t have nine lives. But TWC hopes the Snow Leopard tradition continues. It’s very Wetass and very cool….



“Lenin, you bastard, you always were a murderer…..”

Annals of Inanity–Running Up Stairs…Lots and Lots of Stairs: You’d think racing to the tops of tall buildings would be a half-assed sport, sort of a joke hobby for anyone who gets claustrophobia in an elevator. But the world of extreme sport is endlessly inventive and there always seems to be more than a few people who will happily devote their time to the fringes of athletic endeavor (remember “extreme ironing”?). So it comes as no real surprise to discover that there is a large and physically fit segment of the sporting population that is devoted to stair racing, and today is their Super Bowl, otherwise known as the “Fleet Empire State Building Runup” (my god, they even have serious sponsors!). Anyhow, the concept is obvious, and in the case of this particular sideshow, I mean sporting contest, men and women will race up 86 floors of the Empire State Building. That’s 1,576 steps. And believe it or not, the world record is a mere 9 minutes and 33 seconds. Sounds impressive, but maybe it’s more understandable if you do the math and find that’s 2.75 steps per second. Hope they have some defibrillators on hand…..



Empire State Start: “Out of my way, elevator-legs, first runner to the observation deck gets to use the telescopes for free…”

Joyon II….: Here’s what Joyon’s arrival looked like. And here’s what Thomas Colville, another of France’s great solo sailors had to say about Joyon. Sums it up nicely……

“Francis is without a doubt the best solo sailor we have seen in the last 15 years. He has exceptional physical strength and nothing can stop him. He crosses the Atlantic like others may take their family camping. He shows no fear. On land, his wings don’t touch the ground. Francis, you have to explain…”

If he does, TWC will post it….

Wetass of the Month? Year? Decade?….King Francis Joyon: He’s home, and here are the numbers: 72 days, 22 hours, 54 minutes. That’s 20 days, 5 hours, 3 minutes faster than the previous solo, non-stop, round-the-world sailing record. The first non-stop solo circumnavigation, in 1968, took 313 days, so the bar has been raised by almost a factor of 5. Yesterday TWC compared Joyon’s feat to breaking the four minute mile. Make that the 3-minute mile. Why? Joyon sailed some 26,000 miles at an average speed a fully-crewed multihull would be proud to post. He made nary a tactical mistake with regard to navigation (and refused outside routing because he is a Westass Supreme and wanted to do it all himself), and he protected his boat. Yes, he was very lucky with the weather, but Joyon took what he was given and delivered one of the greatest sailing voyages IN HISTORY. This recor could easily stand a decade or more. Joyon is a quiet, media-shy guy, so there will be no chest-thumping and trash talk. But this is big, very big and TWC will follow-up with any tales Joyon sees fit to tell. Salud, Francis….



One Man, One Boat, One Lap of the Globe, One Incredible Record……