HALLUCINATIONS

Friday 28 septembre 2001

It is now 6 days since the Minis left La Rochelle. Hervé is now at mid-level of Portugal. After the period of calm, they are beating in Force 7 winds. The wind comes due south, as the route they have to do. Like that, they have to sail the distance three times more.

It seems that Hervé is doing quite well. Since is departure, he was even once in 5th position. He is now regularily between the 9th and 11th place, at 730 miles from the arrival.

Now, they are surely felling a lack of sleep and the hard conditions. There is even a first skipper who retired today, Jean-Marie Vidal. Denis Hugues, the director of the race, thinks that this his a decision taken to quickly.

In general, the Pogos are resisting better than the Protos as four of them have dismasted. Paul Peggs and Ronan Guerin repaired and are again in the race.

When you have a lack of sleep funny things can happen on the boat. You might remember that Nick the co-skipper of Herve during the Mini-Fastnet did see squirrels in the middle of the Irish sea (click here to read the full story). One has also heard of Mark Turner, the manager of Ellen McArthur, who did the Mini-Transat in 1997. During the race he thought that there were a whole Whitbread crew on board his Mini. He also hallucinated that there was on board a journalist who wanted to review his boat. He was at the time sailing under spinnaker and he thought :”this is strange!? why has this journalist not lowered the spinnaker ? I’ll have to do it!” and it is only after the spinnaker was on the deck that he realised that there was no journalist so he had to hoist the spinnaker and fast!!
What about Herve? So far he has had no hallucinations on the boat but it is actually once back home that strange things happen: The week-end after the select 6.50, Herve laid on the sofa in the lounge just before dinner for a cap nap of 20 minutes. When Muriel went to wake him up, Herve suddenly jumped from the sofa ran to the window almost ripped them off and completely panicked as he was looking through the window. He did not understand where he was and was sure that his boat was going to strand itself on the shores. It took him at least a minute to realise that he was at home and that his yacht was safe. This is evidence if need be that single-handed races are very difficult psychologically and that they leave marks a long time after the skipper has left his boat at the dock.