Juan Varela is a graduate of VYC’s Junior Sailing Program. Now “all grown up”, Juan was selected to crew on Viva Mexico, a Volvo Open 65 that will be competing in The Ocean Race in 2022. Viva Mexico has been competing in major offshore competitions over the past two years, and this year competed in The Rolex Fastnet Race, a 700 mile offshore race that is as notorious as it is famous. Since 1925, the Fastnet race has been a test of men and boats. Juan told us his story.
Competing in the Fastnet Race
Shortly after competing in the Ocean Race Europe, and after being just a couple of weeks home, I received the call from Viva México´s captain Erik Brockman that we were competing in Fastnet. Suddenly, The Rolex Fastnet Race became a reality rather than a future dream. I was going to be competing in one of the most prestigious races in the world, and not in any boat, in a Volvo 65! The whole adventure started in La Coruña, Spain. We were preparing the boat for the race, the whole crew gathered up and we were off to England. The delivery took us two very short days to cross the Biscay Bay and into the English Channel. The delivery couldn’t be more perfect, most of the time we were doing average speeds of 17 knots without even getting the deck wet. That is, with the exception of the few hours we motored and got stuck on a big net. Jero and I had to go for a dive, successfully cutting the net out of the propeller and bringing the net on board.
Finally, England was on our sight, or kind off. We managed to see the Isle of Wight and some boats doing the around the island race in preparation for the Fastnet. Other boats like “Rambler” were out for a spin. Entering the Channel towards Portsmouth, we started preparing the boat to enter the marina. Our impression of how England would look was correct: rainy, gray, big current and strong wind. Just one thing was more British than any of the previous - next to us, Alex Thompson coming into port on board IMOCA 60 “HUGO BOSS”. We let him pass by us, to show us the way into the marina. Going out, another legendary boat, at least for our Spanish crew members, the Volvo 70 “Telefonica” made her way towards the Solent.
Day of the Start
As soon as we headed out of the marina into the main channel, the spectacle began - in the channel it was blowing 30+ knots and the water was covered with whitecaps. Boats of all kinds from 30ft up to 125ft made their way to the start line. We started in the IRC Z class with all the big monohulls, which was the 3rd start, after the Multihulls and IMOCAs. The cannons for the start fired! All boats started heading upwind, and all were overpowered. Ready for what was to come, tacking and more tacking until we reached the narrowest part of the channel, an area called The Needles. Sailing along with us were some of the fastest boats today, including the new Swan 125 Scorpios, Rambler 88, a mix of Volvo Open 65s, Volvo Open 70s and other fast boats like Varuna, a beautiful Kerr 56.
We managed to sail past The Needles, into the Atlantic, and began sailing upwind towards Ireland. Almost until reaching the Isles of Scilly exclusion zone we started sailing towards Fastnet Rock. At night the wind died as predicted - it was early in the morning when I was called on deck to change sails to our masthead Code 0. After a while the wind reduced even more, and I climbed up the mast to pop the battens. From the top of the mast I could see Fastnet Rock right there in front of us. The sky cleared just enough to see it and I managed to take a blurry picture of the famous Fastnet Lighthouse.
We had a big downwind/reach towards France. Without knowing, we had gone into an exclusion zone! We decided to change sails multiple times to get out of the boundary and go back to the A2 spinnaker. After we got out of the zone, we went back to normal and sailed easily until reaching Cherburg´s coast. By the time we were near Cherbourg the wind became light, but luckily we had 3 knots of current pushing us like a river to the finish line. About a mile from the finish boats started coming around to guide us to the line in Cherbourg port. We finally crossed the finish line, just a few meters behind Allegra, an 84ft catamaran that many of us wished to have been eating and sleeping during the race!
We were all very excited to have completed this incredible race. It didn't disappoint, delivering very exciting racing. With all the excitement apart, everyone was ready to get off the boat and into the racing village to drink and have some food. Giving an end to another amazing race on board Viva México and getting us closer to the main goal toward The Ocean Race in 2022.
Bowman/ Juan Varela