What does it take to race across an ocean alone in a small boat against some of the best sailors in the world?

It’s a question that Seattle sailor and rigger Chris Tutmark can now answer.

In October, he and fellow Pacific Northwest racer Craig Horsfield completed one of the most demanding sailing races in the world—the 4,200-mile Transat 6.50.

And in doing so, Tutmark joined a very small club of U.S. sailors who have successfully completed the race, commonly called the Mini Transat.

This single-handed race in 21-foot boats has been a proving ground for many of the world’s elite open ocean racers. Because organizers limit the number of non-European boats in the race, only a handful of U.S. sailors have participated. So it is especially remarkable that the Northwest produced two campaigns for this year’s race.

On Jan. 22, Tutmark and Horsfield will discuss their inspiring and sometimes harrowing passage from France to Brazil. The Seattle Corinthian Yacht Club event begins at 6:30 p.m. and is free and open to the public.

Three Sheets Northwest recently asked Tutmark to tell us about the lessons he learned about sailing, his boat and himself during the race, and he graciously agreed. For an idea of the amount of time, resources and planning that goes into preparing for such a race, see our earlier story “Seattle sailors pit themselves against the raging Atlantic, Europe’s best and each other in Mini Transat.”

Here’s what Tutmark had to say about his experience:

Tutmark in France at the start of the 4,200-mile race. Photo by Thomas Schmidt.

I am sitting here in my office in Seattle and it really has not fully sunk in that I have just done what less than 20 Americans have done. And I was able to do it in about six months. In those six months I took delivery of a brand new boat, sorted out all the inevitable teething issues, logged over 1,000 miles racing, did a 1,000-mile non-stop solo voyage, sailed another few hundred miles doing deliveries and then raced this same 21-foot boat across the Atlantic.

Add in there that I was doing this in a country where I had never been prior to April and only rudimentarily spoke the language. Seeing the words on paper, it does seem a little more daunting, but having lived this I guess my perspective is a little skewed.

Along the way, I was able to learn a lot, mostly about myself. The biggest lesson I think I learned was that my personal limits are much higher than I thought and not to let doubters stand in the way of a goal. Previously I have done long ocean races and also done an Ironman distance triathlon (Ironman Canada 2005) and this experience was one that required so much more effort than any of these past endeavors that they seem relatively benign in comparison.

Some of the other things that I learned were, in no particular order:

Watch what you eat

I am prone to having a seriously upset stomach the first night of an ocean race. This occurred on leg one and I attributed it to an improperly mixed energy drink. The recovery took a couple of days and forced me to play catch-up later in the leg. On leg two it happened again and this time without the drink mix. Having lived through the unpleasantness on leg one, I knew how to accelerate the recovery and get myself and the boat back up to speed.

Learn to adapt

On a Mini, there is no one perfect sail combination for each wind condition. Since these boats are so short and wide, they are very sensitive to sea state, and a little change can mean a completely different sail combination is needed. I saw this in the southeast trades, where one jibe was the large spinnaker and the other was the medium spinnaker and sometimes a reefed main. This was mostly due to the swell being out of alignment with the wind direction. Also, what the autopilot can handle is often vastly different than what I could handle in terms of sailing the boat.

Tutmark advises following the edge of clouds, just one lesson he learned during the race.

Look for the silver lining

Given the choice, it is better to sail along the edge of a cloud than under one or in a clear area. On both legs I was able to make gains on days where I sailed the edges of clouds and also had some losses where I got into areas of clear sky with clouds around me.

Avoid hitting sharks

Hitting marine life is not a component to good performance. One leg one I hit a small shark, maybe four feet long, near Finisterre. I know it was a shark because it was daylight and I could see it wrapped around my port rudder. With the shark on the rudder, my speed went from 9 knots to 2 knots very quickly. A day or so later, Craig Horsfield hit something with his boat going a bit faster and nearly tore the back off his boat, so I got off pretty well with some scuffed paint and slightly wobbly rudder bushing.

Change is routine

It is important to have a routine on the boat but also be willing to adjust when the situation changes. And it is guaranteed that the situation will change. I think the best example of this was dealing with the weather. The mini class does not allow any outside two-way communication besides VHF during an event, so once the Transat started we were left with the pre-race weather data we had and a fairly high level synopsis that was transmitted on single side band (SSB), which we received on a receiver that we were allowed to carry.

The pre-race forecasts were good out to about six days and leg two was going to be about 20 to 22 days, so historical data was key, along with being able to interpret what each of us saw. Sometimes I got this weather analysis right, sometimes not so much. One place that I was able to make a big gain was going through the Canary Islands; the historical data said that going between Tenerife and Gomera was not a good option since this was often a large windless area. I arrived there just after midnight and got through quite easily. I think I benefited from the wind associated with the islands heating up as the sun rose. People 10 miles behind me got stuck for a few hours as the gate closed shortly after I went through. In replaying the race viewer, it appears approximately one-quarter of the fleet went between Tenerife and Gomera.

Near the bottom of the doldrums, I had the reverse luck. Trying to avoid a degrading squall, I chose to go to the south and east of it and the better choice, in hindsight, was to go to the north and west of it. In one 24-hour period I lost almost 50 miles to some boats as these boats sailed in 10 to 15 knots of northeast wind while I sailed in 0 to 5 knots of southwest wind, and they literally sailed around me.

Tutmark savors a few moment on a Brazilian beach after the race.

Lean to live with consequences

In a similar vein, when one part of a situation changes it will affect everything else, often in ways that were not expected. This happened when I rounded the boat down in approximately 22 knots of wind. I had been sailing under main only with one reef for a couple of hours to get some much-needed sleep. Shortly after sunrise, I decided to hoist the jib to balance the boat and get a bit more speed. Unfortunately, I forgot to adjust the autopilot settings before hoisting the jib and it resulted in the boat crash jibing.

The vang set-up on my boat is a long, circular track with a second short track on the bottom of the boom to keep the tackle aligned vertically. This track system has some friction in it when heavily loaded, and did not allow the boom to come across in the accidental jibe, pinning the boat on its side with the boom now to weather and the main backed.

Before I could react, an 80-cm length of the boom track ripped off and freed the boom. I was lucky that it missed me when it came across. With the boom now against the running backstay, it was a matter of tensioning the loose running backstay and getting the old one off so the boat would come back up. After this little shock to the system, I took about an hour to regroup and figure out a jury rig. There was just enough track remaining on the boom to have a somewhat functional vang, and the small crack in the hull/deck joint was on what would be the windward side for the majority of the rest of the race. I did have to bail some water out of the boat late in the race, but not too much. The biggest bit of luck in the matter was that the cars on the boom track were Harken captive ball cars, so I did not lose any of the ball bearings when the track broke.

Believe in yourself

I think the biggest lesson I learned was to have faith and confidence in myself. Many people I have sailed with place their value on “being better” than someone else on the boat. To my mind, this is not a healthy perspective since sailing, even singlehanded, is a team sport. Actually, this could apply to life as well. Over time, I’d been brainwashed to some degree and had some doubts about whether I could accomplish what I had chosen to do. Sitting here on the other side of this amazing experience, I am quite glad that I chose to take this challenge on. I have become a better sailor and, I think, a better person as a result.

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