Posted by Graham Cox
If Week 1 of Leg 3 was characterised by the closest racing yet seen in the 2025 MGR, then Week 2 only saw that competition intensify. As Week 2 drew to a close, some of these boats were so close together that they could have been match-racing around the buoys.
There were still three distinct groups. As the sun set on 10 August, there was approximately 110 nautical miles between the first and last boat of the leading pack, comprising, from first to last, of Renaud on CAPUCINETTE, Keri on ORIGAMI, Dan on IMMORTAL GAME, and Pilar on PETER PUNK. All of them were set to pass through the outer Great Barrier Reefs at Raine Island the following day, with Renaud and Keri doing so before the sun rose.
It has been interesting to watch the tactics of this group. Renaud, as usual, ploughed a steady course, working the averages, which has served him well so far. Keri dove north looking for stronger winds and ocean currents. It paid off at first, though his last deviation towards the coast of mainland Papua New Guinea may have cost him a few miles. One thing you can say about Keri, he isn’t a follower! Pilar, watching the middle fleet creeping up astern of her, took a gamble and dove south, which did pay dividends, allowing her to stretch out the distance between PETER PUNK and the leaders of the middle pack by some 80 miles.
The middle group were even more tightly bunched. Jakub, on BIBI, and Eric, on SUNBEAR, were less than 2 miles apart late on 10 August. Jakub had been leading Eric for some time, until they came upon a fleet of long-line fishing boats. Jakub was unable to see a way through them, their AIS signals were puzzling, and they did not answer his VHF calls. Eventually he decided to go south. Eric meanwhile, possibly taking a chance, went north and gained a few miles on Jakub, only to see BIBI claw back the lead over the next few days. Adam’s LITTLE WREN was only 17 miles astern of Jakub. These latter two have had a long-standing friendly rivalry and have been egging each other on with lots of VHF chats.
This threesome looked like their positions would remain close all the way to Thursday Island, though who would get there first was uncertain. One wonders how they sleep. Do they take it in relays? I would not put it past them. Like other long-distance races in the past, such as early BOC events, competitiveness and companionship seem to go hand in hand. (When Eric made his mandatory fortnightly call on 11 August, he said that on that particular night, when SUNBEAR and BIBI were so close, neither skipper got any sleep! They both carried their A3 kites throughout the night, trying to outdo each other.)
The third group was more scattered, with Josh, on SKOOKUM, sitting about 70 miles astern of Adam, while Jasmine was around 14 miles astern of Josh. Ertan, on TREKKA, was 30 miles SE of Jasmine; Gary, on QUESTION 2, was 40 miles astern of her; and Christian, on ARGO, around 60 miles SSE of NUMBATOU. All these distances are approximate – due to the scale of the tracker – but close enough for comparative purposes. Christian, sitting in 10th place, was only 320 miles east of Renaud.
So much for the statistics, though they do tell something of the unique nature of this one-design circumnavigation race. There have been lots of social media posts this week, from Renaud and Keri’s beautiful sunsets, to Christian’s nifty deck-work, followed later by gory shots of the head wound he sustained when struck by the boom when ARGO was struck by a vicious cross-sea, and Jakub’s drama trying to work his way through an unresponsive fishing fleet. In Jakub’s next post, the following day, BIBI can be seen sailing fast with poled-out jib, and the skipper has a big smile on his face.
One of Adam’s video clips showed him enjoying his usual relaxed approach to passage-making. Another showed him ‘en naturel’, having a bucket bath in the cockpit. Keri posted a comment saying, “Not that bucket!” I suspect, like John Guzzwell before him, he only has one.
During the previous week, we were awed by Adam’s footage of the curious orca that fell in love with LITTLE WREN. Adam says that he was leaning over the stern when the orca came barrelling up from the depths straight at him. It paused for a while, clearly fascinated by the rudder and Hydrovane unit waggling back and forth, while memories of orcas biting yacht rudders off the coast of Portugal in recent years flashed through his mind. It then swam off, only to return a short while later and circle the boat for 15 minutes. It was so close at times that Adam could have tickled its snout. No wonder he likes a shot of whisky with his breakfast!
Jasmine takes home the biscuit this week (as long as it’s chocolate-coated) with her highly-informative and entertaining clip of life aboard NUMBATOU, sorting out a tangled kite, munching snacks, doing a bit of hand-steering, munching snacks, taking a snooze, and, did I mention, munching snacks – all filmed with perfect comic timing. Glimpses of NUMBATOU sailing along wing and wing after the tangles are sorted out belie her contention that she’s still a novice sailor! Sitting in 9th position, she has been maintaining a steady performance worthy of an old salt. In the last 24 hours to Monday morning, 8 August, she ran a distance of 125 miles and was averaging 5.9 knots. This was followed by four days where NUMBATOU’s slowest day was 100 miles, and the fastest, on 12 August, 127.
Dan Turner found himself struggling with thoughts of home as IMMORTAL GAME neared Australian waters. He mentioned last week that he wasn’t worried about losing out the lead to Renaud and Keri, although he was clearly still racing, maintaining 3rd place after two weeks at sea – but says he is also focussed on relaxing and enjoying himself. It is as much an adventure as an ocean race for him, he says. On 6 August he crossed his 2018 track from the Melbourne-Osaka race, noting that he had now crossed the Pacific from north to south and east to west.
He also had to divert course in the middle of the night when a nearby fishing vessel turned on a group of AIS beacons in his path that were in in some sort of semi-circle formation. He thought it might be some kind of large fishing net, as the longline buoys are normally named. He was not prepared to take a chance and go through the middle.
At 1430 AEST (local time) on 11 August he was in through the outer barrier reefs and sailing at 5.3 knots. Having approached on a WNW course, he sailed straight in through the Raine Island passage without having to change direction and had yet to alter course towards Thursday Island. Around 1000 AEST on 12 August, he posted a video of IMMORTAL GAME screeching past Cape York, the northernmost point of Australia, with a bone in her teeth. Dan was all teeth himself, grinning with delight at being back in home waters. The photo accompanying this article is a screenshot from that clip.
Renaud was the first one through the outer reefs in the early hours of the morning. In a brief phone call at 1030 AEST, he said that there had been a full moon but he did not see anything, “apart from waves from everywhere, because I had the currents in front of me.” The current was ebbing at 1.5 knots, more or less, when he came through the pass, creating a wind-against-tide situation and kicking up the waves.
Once he was through the pass he headed NW, and a rising sun revealed beautiful turquoise water, with 15-20 knot SE winds pushing him along under double-reefed mainsail and poled-out jib. He sounded happy to be in sheltered waters, albeit reef-strewn ones, as the forecast for the following 24 hours indicated that the wind would increase to 28-30 knots.
He said he was very tired, having hardly slept in his approaches to the reef, but hoped to get 30-40 minutes of sleep as he passed each waypoint, where there would be short stretches of open water in front of CAPUCINETTE’s bows. He had an anchor prepared if necessary but did not plan to stop.
For a while, the tide was with Renaud once he headed north, but by the time he called, he thought it was beginning to turn against him, as the seas were beginning to form weird shapes. At 1450 AEST he was flying along at 5.8 knots, and the YB tracker showed that CAPUCINETTE had a weak tide in her favour, while Keri, on ORIGAMI, just 20 miles astern, had the current on the port beam. Dan, 35 miles SSE of Keri, had a strong tide right on the nose, though he was still averaging 5.3 knots. These waters are, to some extent, ruled by tidal streams.
Keri was the second skipper through the outer reef. While Renaud skirted the southern edge of Raine Island, with the island close under his lee, not willing to squander a single mile, Keri chose to stay on the southern, or windward side of the pass, leaving as much distance between ORIGAMI and Raine Island as possible, in case he needed room to manouvre for any reason. Once a RN commander, always… etc, etc.
He arrived at the passage just as dawn was breaking, and was relaxed enough to film it, and post a cryptic message on social media, which I am sure his navy cronies would have understood. This is what he wrote: “Special Sea Dutymen closed up; ORIGAMI is in Damage Control State 3, Condition Yankee, sheet anchor ready for letting go… SSDs for 36 hours to come, and not even a ‘gash relief’ in sight.”
Like the others, Keri has relished the close-quarters racing of this leg, and the opportunity to make tactical decisions and see how they play out. He chose to take ORIGAMI north the first night out of Vuda Marina, in an attempt to regain distance lost in the lagoon, when he refused to use his outboard motor to push through the light winds initially encountered there.
Using the electric outboard motor is allowed after the start (though the limited electrical power available to recharge batteries, and the requirement to complete the leg unassisted, restrict how often it can be used). Keri, however, does not think this is a proper way to race, so he willingly self-sacrifices in this regard to maintain his stance. He acknowledges that it costs him every time!
By going north, he hoped to avoid the wind-shadow that often can be found in the lee of Vanuatu. And as he has said often, there is little to be gained in a race by following the leader (especially if said leader is as experienced as Renaud). This worked well, and ORIGAMI was soon challenging CAPUCINETTE for the lead, for the first time since the Atlantic Ocean.
The fact that the wind-shadow filled in quickly in the north (though it trapped Christian to the south of the islands), meant that the tactic was not as successful as it might have been, though at one point ORIGAMI was only 15 miles astern of CAPUCUINETTE and slowly gaining. If, like Dan, Renaud had gone south of Indispensable Reefs off the Solomon Islands, Keri might have snatched the lead.
However, Renaud could see that there were stronger winds and more favourable currents up where Keri was, so he abandoned duelling with Dan and headed NW. Keri immediately went further north, quite close to the Papua New Guinea coast. This did not pay off as well, with a coastal wind shadow slowing ORIGAMI’s progress. It is possible that if Keri had not made that final detour, he would have been close enough to CAPUCINETTE’s transom to read her port of registry by the end of this stage.
Like the others, Keri noted that – after the first couple of unpleasant days – there was a long spell of near-perfect weather, with only a few squalls, none of which had a lot of weight in them. He even managed to keep his A5 up through some of them. The sea-state was also moderate. Combined with the close racing, this made for what has probably been the most pleasant passage of the MGR to date.
One major change aboard ORIGAMI is that Keri has been doing very little hand-steering. He has now fine-tuned the operation of ORIGAMI’s Aries servo-pendulum windvane unit, and finds it can usually steer the boat well even when driving hard. The game-changer was to fit slack shock cord to the windvane’s counterbalance, which allows the vane to flop freely from side to side with changes in wind direction, but restricts it once it reaches a certain angle, preventing the unit from oversteering. He credits Renaud, among others, for helping him work this out.
If he thinks he can go faster by hand steering, he occasionally does, but notes that a lot of the time the Aries can steer just as well as he can, especially when you take fatigue and the resultant loss of concentration into account. Anyone who has gone cross-eyed staring for hours at a compass, trying to steer a steady course, will understand this!
Despite the mostly benign weather, there has been a lot of variation in wind strength and direction, and he has been kept busy with sail changes. In the course of a single day, he might change from A7 to A5, then to A3, then back to A7, then to the jib, then back to the A5, etc, plus putting reefs in the mainsail and shaking them out time and again. Listening to Keri recount details of his deck work provided me with a graphic illustration of just how fierce the competition has been.
One thing that has helped, he notes, is that he now knows ORIGAMI much better than when the fleet left Portugal – meaning that he can get the boat into the groove much quicker, without too much experimentation.
He did not plan to stop once inside the reefs, and felt confident that he could complete the 24-hour transit from Raine Island to Thursday Island without sleep. He has never required a lot of sleep luckily, and also does not find ‘banking’ sleep (where you sleep a lot before committing to a difficult piece of navigation) useful.
The last skipper in the leading pack of four was Pilar Passanau, aboard PETER PUNK, and she has been on fire, slowly drawing further and further away from the middle pack, hot on Dan Turner’s heels. Her short video reels show a determined and yet healthy, happy, and refreshed skipper, giving it all she has got. On 8 August, she ran 144 miles, covering more miles than anyone in the fleet. That was followed by a 126-mile day, and then a 136-mile day on the 11th, with an AVERAGE speed of 6.7 knots.
On the 12th, she averaged 129 miles, which included negotiating the passage through the outer reefs at Raine Island and threading through the scattered coral enroute Thursday Island. At 1330 AEST, she had around 50 miles to go to Thursday Island. These are phenomenal speeds for a 19ft boat.
You can say this about ALL the fleet, even those at the back. To call them ‘the middle pack’, or ‘the third pack’, may sound like they are your average Joe Blows, but that is only by way of comparison to the extraordinary performance of the frontrunners. They are all averaging more than 4 knots, even Ertan, who has been enjoying a fine cruise, hardly ever raising a sweat, and never appearing on TREKKA’s deck in the morning before he has shaved, bathed and donned a clean shirt. Usually, the average speeds of this group are between 5 and 6 knots.
The fleet is sailing so fast that Don is joking (I think he is joking) that he will have to slow them down to make sure they don’t get to Cape Town before he and Jane do in December!
Eric admitted that having Jakub and Adam so close had galvanised all of them to sail harder – about 10 miles separated the three of them for days. It seemed anyone’s guess which of them would reach Raine Island first. However, on the morning of 11 August, the YB tracker showed that SUNBEAR had dramatically altered course to the NW, and was sailing away from the Raine Island rhumb line. A conversation with Eric later in the day confirmed what seemed obvious – he was heading for Bligh Entrance and the NE Shiping Channel.
There were a number of reasons why he had chosen this course at the last moment. Central was the building swell and wind. At the time of his call, it was mostly about 2m, though there were larger waves of around 3m coming through from the south, which slammed into SUNBEAR’s beam. Given that the forecast was for the wind and sea to gradually build, he was uncertain if he wanted to approach Raine Island in those conditions.
Another major factor was that he was not sure if he could transit Raine Passage in daylight on 12 August, and did not like the idea of slowing down or heaving-to for the night. He felt that he might make a faster passage by continuing on through the night to Bligh Entrance, even though the route is longer.
In the meantime, a late message from Jakub stated that he, Adam and Captain Coconut were hoping to get in just before dark on Tuesday night. If they do, they may get a jump on Eric. For armchair admirals, at least, it is all rather fascinating. By late afternoon on 12 August, SUNBEAR had slipped back to 7th position but was still sailing at 5.4 knots.
Eric was having a grand time, however, and said it is all a great deal of fun. He was running fast downwind, with the Hydrovane doing all the work. Like Keri, he has given up hand-steering, as he used to do during daylight hours on earlier legs, since the windvane does such an excellent job most of the time. SUNBEAR had the jib poled out opposite the triple-reefed main, but he had just furled the A7 to make his call, and planned to re-set it as soon as we had finished talking.
He also had his drogue ready to deploy if the sea built up to a point where SUNBEAR was at risk of broaching, and felt that all this was good practice for handling the boisterous trade winds that the fleet can expect between Cocos-Keeling Atoll and Mauritius, where 3-4m seas from the SE, combined with SW cross-swells coming up from Southern Ocean winter storms, can make for some wild sailing. (I can confidently state that the Cocos-Mauritius passage has accounted for more full-blown knockdowns than any other trade wind passage in the world.)
When Adam called, he said that LITTLE WREN was also experiencing 2m seas on the port aft quarter, with occasional 3m sets on the beam that slammed into the boat. He was carrying the jib poled out to windward and a deeply reefed mainsail to starboard, but had just furled the A7. He planned to reset it after his call. He had covered 133 miles in the previous 24 hours, averaging 5.8 knots for the last four hours, according to the tracker.
He admitted that he had been hand-steering more than usual, though also said he had benefitted from some favourable current. Besides the close competition with Jakub and Eric, he was keen to get in as soon as possible, before the wind and sea-state built too much. ‘It’s going to be up to 25 knots tonight,’ he said, ‘and then it’ll ease a little bit, and it’ll be around 20-odd knots to get into the reef tomorrow. My ETA there is around about 1700 hours local time.’
He noted that he had ALMOST come to like hand-steering, and found it useful to get a feel for the boat’s balance before engaging the self-steering gear. He would keep adjusting his sails and trim until the boat was both balanced and sailing fast, then engage the windvane. If he did not do this, he wasted a lot of time messing around. This approach is obviously working, as by the afternoon of 12 August, approaching Raine Island, he was 1.6 miles in front of Jakub. At last! I can just see his cheeky grin.
If there was a prize for sheer determination in the MGR, Christian would be a firm contender. Despite numerous setbacks, including serious health challenges, he has pressed on with enthusiasm, never giving an inch. Having discovered a faulty rigging terminal on ARGO the day before the start of Leg 3, requiring a hasty lowering of the mast to check the rest of the fittings, he set sail without the chance to fine-tune the rig. He also did not have time to stow his gear properly.
Whether changes to ARGO’s rig or trim were responsible, he had difficulty getting the boat in the groove in the first days out of Vuda Marina. Because the wind was NE, and ARGO would only self-steer off the wind, Christian found himself well south of the rhumb line after a couple of days.
By the time he had sorted things out, he had to make the decision whether to work back north, following the rest of the fleet around the northern end of Vanuatu, or carry on south of the archipelago. He chose to go south, both because it seemed like the shorter route, and also because logic suggested that the southern side was the windward coast, given that they were in the heart of the SE trade wind belt.
However, the wind persisted in blowing from the NE for some days, creating a significant wind shadow south and west of the islands, in which ARGO wallowed for days, while the other 580s sailed away to the west. Eventually the wind filled in from the south, by which time ARGO was more than 300 miles behind the leading boats, but Christian began to push ARGO as hard as he could.
The potential unreliability of the rig played on his mind, and the boat was still struggling a little with directional stability under windvane, but he began to make steady inroads into ARGO’s milage deficit. On 5 August he ran 123miles, followed by 119 on the 8th, 112 on the 10th, 122 on the 11th and a whopping 134 on the 12th, when he averaged 5.9 knots for more than four hours. ARGO sneaked up the leaderboard during this time to 10th position, and late on the afternoon of 12 August was only 4 miles behind Jasmine on NUMBATOU.
This is even more remarkable because he is now carrying a significant head wound, after being struck by the boom on 10 August, while standing up in the cockpit, struggling into his safety harness. ARGO was unexpectedly flung to windward on the back of a wave, and the boom, which did not have its usual preventer rigged, swung inboard and split his skull. He was lucky not to suffer concussion, just a nasty headache for a day or so.
After consulting with Medical Support Offshore (MSOS), he bandaged the wound to apply pressure to it and lay down to rest. It might have benefited from stitches or staples, but even superheroes like MGR skippers don’t have eyes in the back of their heads!
At the time he called, the wind had eased and Christian had the A5 poled out to windward with a bit of mainsail. He might just have been able to carry the A3 but it is too big to pole out to windward. If the wind got lighter, he would consider setting the A3 to leeward.
Although he greatly improved ARGO’s electrical set-up in Fiji, he still has to watch his power consumption and sometimes switched everything off and hand-steered for short periods at night, though usually not for more than 2 hours or so. The rest of the time he left his Echomax on and switched the AIS on and off regularly to check for marine traffic. He had seen very little shipping, apart for the same fishing fleet that gave other MGR skippers a lot of anxiety.
Once he was buzzed by a large, unmarked plane that flew around ARGO at low altitude. This plane also visited Gary on QUESION 2, and even waggled its wings when Gary waved to the pilots. Gary said that it looked like an Australian military plane (perhaps keeping an eye on the Chinese fishing fleet).
Gary, aboard QUESTION 2, was steadily bringing up the back of the fleet, but still maintaining good averages, clocking up between 109 and 119 miles a day. Coming last is merely a reflection on how fast and furious these boats are sailing west. His phone signal kept dropping in and out, as did the calls from other MGR skippers on 11 August, due, probably to the violent motion of the boats.
Gary had fallen heavily across the cockpit while putting his harness on a few days earlier. One hand for yourself, one for the ship, is the old sailor’s wisdom, but it isn’t always possible. Luckily, he was not injured, and said it was nothing compared to the brutal night he endured on 10 August. That night, QUESTION 2 was broad-reaching with triple-reefed mainsail and half-rolled up jib, but every now and then a larger than usual wave would slam into the boat and it would round up. Sometimes the leeward windows were buried in green water. It wasn’t exactly scary, though Gary admitted to often feeling anxious at sea. It was just damned uncomfortable.
At the time of his call, he was sailing under A5 only, and the boat seemed steadier, with less tendency to round up. Ironically, he felt he was still sailing too fast, averaging over 100 miles a day, and wanted to slow down a bit in order to arrive at Raine Island Passage in daylight.
One of Gary’s anxious moments came when he had to make a running repair to his Hydrovane unit, which had developed a bit of play in the plastic ferrule that connects the tiller to the main body, which had worn by around 1mm. This involved leaning over the back of the boat to remove and replace parts, without dropping any components into the water.
Disabling the unit would have been more than inconvenient, as Gary chose to fit the unit on the centreline, removing QUESTION 2’s original rudder. He says that, on reflection, he would choose next time to offset the Hydrovane and retain the original rudder, as most others have done. There are times when he struggles to get the unit to work as well as desired, whereas those who offset their units seem to find them totally reliable.
There won’t be a next time for Gary in this event, as he has decided to retire in Darwin and truck QUESTION 2 back to Sydney. He plans, however, to keep the boat, using it for some local cruising and twilight racing, as well as possibly some offshore cruising to Lord Howe Island and New Zealand.
Nonetheless, to have crossed the Pacific Ocean alone on a 19ft boat, especially one that you have built yourself, is a tremendous achievement. Very few people have done it. The fact that shortly there will be 15 ALMA Class Globe 580s that have done it (including DELJA 99 & 100, who are still in the islands), is testament to both the skippers and to Don McIntyre’s vision and planning, as well as Janusz Maderski’s design. The motto of McIntyre Adventures is HISTORY IN THE MAKING, and it is indeed.
The attached image shows Dan Turner, aboard IMMORTAL GAME, passing the tip of Cape York, the northernmost tip of Australia, on 12 August, marking the end of his Pacific crossing. Image by Dan Turner (screenshot taken from his video).
