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Conrad Colman really hopes the sun comes out.
It’s not just to keep him warm during the Northern winter but the Kiwi sailor has nearly run out of electricity needed to power his cockpit.
Colman is committed to completing the race with no emissions but his boat is going too slowly for the hydro generator to work – he needs to be sailing at least 7 knots for that to work and in the last 24 hours averaged only 2.4 knots – which is where sunshine would be useful to give his solar panels a boost.
“At the moment, I am nervously watching the energy tick down and at the moment things don’t really add up,” he told the Vendee Globe website.
(Disaster struck when Conrad Colman's mast came down on February 10. Photo: Conrad Colman)
Colman’s food supplies also don’t add up and on tip of that he's had to navigate his way through a busy shipping lane, something he described as “a bit like crawling across a highway”.
These are just the latest challenges for the 33-year-old as he endeavours to finish the Vendee Globe. The non-stop solo round-the-world yacht race is supposed to be hard but Colman has suffered his fair share of setbacks.
He had a fire on board Foresight Natural Energy, saw his forestay break in the Southern Ocean, which nearly brought down his mast, and was down to his last set of sails.
He thought he was homeward bound, with only 730 nautical miles of the 24,000-mile race remaining, when he lost his mast in 30-35 knots and heavy seas on February 10.
After recovering from the shock of the dismasting of his IMOCA 60, Colman about setting up a jury rig with his damaged boom and some headsails and four days later started making slow progress to the coast of France. He’s still 240nm from the finish line at Les Sables D'Olonne which, at his present rate, might see him complete the gruelling race on Sunday (NZ time).
(Conrad Colman is making slow progress with a jury rig. Photo: Conrad Colman)
“It was unbelievable when it happened,” Colman said. “I felt like I had been through so much at that point. It has not been an easy Vendée Globe at all. I don’t think such a thing exists but my one seems to have been particularly difficult. I felt I was in the clear.
“I was in a crazy depression but I had been through the eye of the storm, the wind was as forecast. I was reaching in 30kts which, after everything I have been through, felt pretty negligible. I had the J3 small jib and two reefs in the main which was the right kind of sail plan for the conditions. Then when it all fell down about my head I could not believe it. I felt like I had failed, the stewardship of my boat, and the stewardship of my race. It was heartbreaking.
“There are the emotions of ‘my race is over’. There is the stress of the mast and sails that have just gone over the side cost more than my house, and I have already got a mortgage on my house and so it is pretty terrifying. Emotionally, financially, in every scenario it felt like the pits.”
But Colman wasn’t prepared to admit defeat. Part of the appeal of the race for the former Aucklander was overcoming challenges, no matter how big. He also saw it as a way to utilise his skills as a sportsman (he was a competitive mountain biker), entrepreneur, marketer and mechanic.
“It is all about finishing,” he said. “I called my wife, I called race direction and said I did not require assistance. I was not going out. I was going to wait and see what happened. I curled up in a ball and went to sleep. I was numb to what had happened. That was, of course, after cutting everything away.
“Then metaphorically and literally a new day dawned. I felt like I have come all of this way and I was driven by anger and bloody mindedness, stubbornness, to not be beaten on the doorstop of the race.”
The repairs have been energy-sapping, and it hasn’t helped that Colman had nearly run out of food. He had started with 100 days' food and is now on his 109th day.
A couple of days ago he told vendeeglobe.org he was down to his last two packets of powdered soup and some biscuits in his liferaft emergency supplies. He’s also vegetarian so fishing is a last resort.
(Colman dined out on some alfalfa sprouts recently. Photo: Conrad Colman)
Colman has seen a top-10 finish escape him, which would have been a good achievement given the age of his boat, and he’s now in 15th of the 18 still left in the race (29 started). But finishing is the goal now.
He’s averaging about 50nm a day in painfully light breeze – most of the rest of the fleet are averaging closer to 250nm – and hopes an approaching depression might accelerate his progress.
It would be a remarkable achievement if Colman finished the race.
He’s tired, hungry and sleep deprived. He is, in so many ways, running on empty.
