Petite Sailor Sam is almost home, alone

Tired, aching, in need of a shower and considerably lighter than when she left England, 33-year-old Sam Davies is set to sail into Boston today at the end of the 2,800-nautical-mile Artemis transatlantic race.

After 14 days of solo sailing through huge swells and high winds, and despite technical glitches, icebergs and a close encounter with a 60ft whale, Davies has survived one of the oldest and most gruelling solo yacht races. As The Sunday Times went to press, she was at the helm of the leading British boat, ahead of Dee Caffari, the only other woman and the only other Briton still in the race. The forecast was for squally weather, and she was preparing for a bumpy finish.

“The swell is huge, even though there’s no wind, so the sails are batting around madly,” she told us by satellite phone. “The mainsail is crashing across so violently I’m worried it’s going to break something.

“Right now I’m complaining about having no wind, but in 24 hours it’s likely I’ll be complaining of too much.”

Davies’s achievement is even more impressive, considering her almost disastrous start. Less than 24 hours into the race, which began in Plymouth on May 11, Davies was already in deep water. Sailing into thick fog off Land’s End, she couldn’t even see the top of the mast on Roxy, her 60ft yacht. Then her radar stopped working, leaving her with no warning of obstacles.

Caught in the busy coastal waters, she waited for the darkness to lift and the fog to clear, praying nobody would crash into her. “The one thing I am really scared of is fog,” says Davies, speaking from the middle of the Atlantic Ocean. “I spent the whole of the first night trying to trace the problem but there was nothing I could do except keep my eyes peeled and my fingers crossed until light.”

The Artemis Transat was founded in 1960 by the late Sir Francis Chichester, the British pioneering aviator and yachtsman. Originally known as the Ostar, it runs every four years from Plymouth to Boston, Massachusetts. Along the 2,800-nautical-mile (3,230 land miles) course, competitors must battle with rough seas, icy winds and ice floes as they head west, all the time hoping they don’t have an unscheduled meeting with a killer whale.

Last week Davies was in fifth place overall in the Open 60 Class (open meaning entry is largely unrestricted, excepting some basic rules about dimensions and safety; 60 being the length of the yachts in feet). Three other Britons had suffered technical problems and failed to even make it off the start line, leaving just Davies and Caffari to fly the flag.

Despite her petite frame – she’s just 5ft 5in tall and far from butch – Davies is proving a formidable offshore racer. The granddaughter of a submariner, her parents introduced her to sailing when she was a young girl. Then, after an engineering degree at St John’s College, Cambridge, a chance meeting with Ellen McArthur led her to a place in the all-female crew of Tracey Edwards’s 1998 bid to seize the Jules Verne Trophy for the fastest sailboat circumnavigation of the globe.

That attempt ended with a broken mast in the middle of the Southern Ocean, but catapulted Davies into the world of single-handed offshore racing. The Transat is her biggest challenge to date.

In the two weeks since the 13 competitors in the Open 60 class set sail from Plymouth, one boat dropped out after a collision with a whale, and another ran over a shark, which slashed the keel and forced the boat to quit the race.

“The problem is that the boats are doing 30 knots or more at full pelt, equivalent to 35mph, except it feels much, much faster,” says Davies. “At first you can’t help thinking about what could go wrong, you can’t sleep. You also have to remember we have no windscreen, no wipers, no headlights and no brakes.

“By the time you realise you’re heading towards a collision it’s often too late to do anything. The other day I sailed past a whale about the same size as Roxy. I was lucky: all I got was some great photos.”

She wasn’t quite as fortunate a few days later when a whale smashed into the underside of the boat, damaging a daggerboard. But Davies pressed on, still minus her radar. After daybreak on the second day of the race, she had scaled Roxy’s mast to reach the radar and try to fix it. She found the protective seal broken, and the radar waterlogged and corroded. “I knew straight away there was nothing I could do but be extra-vigilant.”

As the yachtswoman skirted icy waters in the western Atlantic, she kept a close lookout for icebergs. “We were just 300 miles from where the Titanic sank and there was much more ice than usual. You couldn’t help thinking about it.”

At sea Davies is in contact with her shore team, based near Lorient on the Brittany coast, and it offers advice on tactics and technical problems. Other than that, she’s pretty much alone, apart from occasional calls to Romain Attanasio, her French boyfriend and also a professional sailor.

If weather conditions permit, she sleeps about four hours a day in 40-minute bursts with the yacht on autopilot, converting what is her waking-hours seat into a flat bed. Her meals are prepacked, freeze-dried, boil-in-the-bag affairs, and the chicken korma is her favourite: “It’s actually like being in a curry house – I was just missing the pint of Kingfisher.” She also has a daily ration of chocolate, and when I call, she happens to be selecting from a box of pralines. “I try to be healthy but when things get tense I do tend to resort to chocolate.”

Washing is restricted to the occasional seawater bucket shower and wet wipes. She spends most of her time below deck but must venture out every few hours, sometimes every few minutes, to trim or change sails, and gets beaten and lashed by the sea spray. She has to raise and lower a mainsail that’s more than twice her body weight, and expects to lose up to 5lb during the course of the race.

As she sailed into rough seas, Davies crossed her fingers and hoped her luck would hold out.

— For more information on the Artemis Transat race and to check Davies’s final position, go to www.theartemistransat.com

The young woman and the sea

The race Artemis Transat
Route 2,800 nautical miles from Plymouth, England, to Boston, Massachusetts
Race record (Open 60 class) 12 days, 15hr, 18min
The boat Roxy
Top speed 30 knots (35mph)
Length 60ft
Mast height 89ft
Keel bulb weight 2.8 tons
The skipper Sam Davies
Sleep per day Six 40-minute power naps
Litres of drinking water taken 54
Kit Eight sails, including a 150kg (330lb) mainsail, 1km of rope, two satellite phones
Food 28 freeze-dried ready meals, porridge, and plenty of chocolate
Calories a day 3,000-4,000
Weight loss during the race About 5lb
Pampering Two seawater bucket showers