Sergio Frattaruolo tells us how the skippers sleep and eat in a race solo around the world.
This time we talk about other aspects of daily life starting from sleep: also during a Regatta a correct number of hours of sleep is vital, but how to reconcile this requirement with running solo?
For safety reasons, such as avoiding collisions (in this Vendée Globe, for example there are already been two collisions with vessels that have caused the abandonment of the boats, fortunately with no injuries) or adapt the boat to changes according to the wind and sea conditions, you cannot “leave” the boat itself several hours while sleeping.
In addition, the VG is a race, and it is imperative to achieve continuous performance.
The solution adopted by the skipper is to divide the long night’s sleep in several short sleep sessions. These sessions are from 10 minutes to 30 minutes long depending on the skipper, the type of boat, the sailing area / conditions and the race.
For example on the “Mini”, in which is prohibited the radar use and then the risk of collision is much higher, my sleep was 13 minutes long every 2 hours, plus one 1,5 hour long sleep after sunrise (of course getting up every 13 minutes to control the boat and the horizon). I set 3 periods on the timer: one to 6 minutes for difficult situations such as navigation in proximity to the coast and other vessels, one in 13 minutes and the last in 20 minutes for a mode called “on Sunday morning.” The timer is connected to one or more sirens, and to avoid the automatic unwittingly disable and go back to sleep, it is often installed in the cockpit a button that must be pressed to turn off the siren. So either you get up or the siren continues to sound louder.
My worst waking up was in the Arcipelago of Capo Verde, during the Transat 6.50 2011: I broke a rudder and was trying to reach Mindelo, I woke up finding a pod of whales that crossed my bow to 100 meters away…
The exasperation is often achieved in the Figaro class, an extremely competitive class frequented by the best solitaire; the sleep sessions may last for less than 10 minutes and the skipper often do not sleep for the first 30/40 hours after the start. Obviously such rhythms are not sustainable for long races like the Vendée, but not surprisingly the pretenders to the victory often were “figaristi”.
How is it possible to sleep in a different way and be relaxed and shiny?
The short sleep sessions, can be actually very productive: after an appropriate training (such as biofeedback, yoga, etc…) and if you are biologically predisposed, you can enter the REM stage (the stage of sleep where the brain rests and dreams) in a couple of minutes. One thing that continues to amaze me is that often you dream in episodes during this stages, and you take on the dream from where you left it!
There are very good skipper, but they can not properly manage your sleep, so in solo races can not get the results they deserve.
Times for sleep are not the same, but different according to the people: everyone has some productive times to sleep, and on the contrary, moments in witch we are less shiny and it is easier to make mistakes, a good practice would be to avoid complicated operations and dangerous in these times.
Where you sleep? In recent years have become popular big puff that you often see in photos. I think they are a great solution and I use them also in the class 40: they adapt to the body and allow you to sleep at any point of the boat; alternatively you can sleep on cots attached to the sides with an adjustable inclination.
And now, the food!
During a solo race in the ocean everything must be optimized, it is inefficient and dangerous to spend hours in the kitchen to prepare sauces and dishes, and also the quantity and variety of food required would be difficult to manage.
The most widely food used are the dehydrated ones: single-dose bags of cooked foods that have been taken off air and water (the water is produced by desalination using seawater); is easy to boil water, add it to the envelope and the food back “edible”. I do not like these kind of food, often they are often studied for the mountains with absurd flavors not that not accommodate the movement of the boat.
In recent years there has been greater use of the pressure cooker that allows you to cook meals like pasta and other foods quickly and safely; Giovanni Soldini, for example, is also a master in the use of the pressure cooker.
Generally the food is divided by one bag a day, according to the climatic zones (the food needs we have sailing in the equator is very different from what we have in the southern oceans). A bag contains 3 main meals, with sweet and savory snacks in addition to give a psychological satisfaction. Sometimes there’s even a few surprises, such as cards or gifts: women are fantastic in preparing these surprises.
Is difficult to find the right words to describe the feeling you have when you open the bag. Imagine being alone for weeks in the middle of nowhere in the ocean because there are not dolphins playing and seagulls flying, and you have to stay focused on duties and to run the boat. But when you open that bag, for five minutes you return a child unwrapping gifts on Christmas Day. Find a surprise, a sweet, a card with beautiful words is a priceless emotion.