Sam Davies hampered by technical issues finishes 28th in IMOCA Class

“Even though I knew as a competitor it would be a struggle to be competitive on this Route du Rhum with a boat which is so new and me not really having trained on it, you still want to do well but it is frustrating when you have not done the training and the miles, you do not have the keys to sailing the boat fast all the time. I had a couple of issues initially which were not really serious but were just really bad timing at the fronts. So having to deal with that took a lot and I don’t think I managed that well. After that I was too cautious as I had things which broke. And from then on I was too cautious, to try and avoid breaking anything that would take me out of the race. My J3 tack broke right in the middle of the worst part of the front in 40kts. And I ended up going downwind and at the same time my wind wand blew off the top of the rig. And so I ended up going downwind trying to get the J3 under control in 40kts with the boat out of control, nose diving into the waves. I was just hanging on to the bow going really, really fast and trying to sort that out. That kind of calmed me down for a bit. I could have done things differently and I should have done things differently. I had an issue with the keel which meant I had to slow down to the end. I did not want to shake it around too much as there are some bits which are a bit loose.”