A trip around the world | It was lucky that the mast of Tapio Lehtinen’s boat didn’t snap in the open sea: “We would have drifted to Easter Island and been stuck there without food for two months”

Southampton

Sailor Tapio Lehtinen is preparing for the Ocean Globe Race, which starts on a seemingly calm Sunday, in Southampton harbour.

However, there is turmoil in my mind.

The Finnish team’s Galiana WithSecure boat had to be in top condition when Lehtinen sailed it with his team in a test competition at the Fastnet Race in England in July.

It was the other way around.

Galiana’s mast broke in heavy seas and in the dark. Miraculously, the team was able to lift the mast that had fallen into the sea and attach it to the side of the boat.

Galiana and the seasick team slowly limped back to Gosport, where the boat went to the shipyard for repairs.

“In the end, I was almost the only one who didn’t throw up. I was also clearly feeling bad and had to hurry. It was a show of seamanship from the whole team that everything went in good order. The whole team acted really smartly and sensibly,” Lehtinen recalls the event on July 23.

The luck in the accident was that it happened in a test race and not in the middle of the open sea. In the worst case, the rigging – masts, booms, shrouds and stays – could have collapsed in the long stretch of sea after New Zealand.

“Then you would have drifted to Easter Island and been stuck there without food for two months,” Lehtinen jokes, but gets serious:

“It was important to get the sulfur on board. Otherwise, no mast company would have supplied us with new sulfur in this schedule, and the Ocean Globe Race would have been missed. The financial damage was still considerable.”

Why how did it happen? In practice, Galiana was rebuilt during the winter at the shipyard in Hernesaari. Everything had to be okay.

Lehtinen points an accusing finger at the French manufacturer responsible for the sulfur and the mast.

The company already visited Galiana a year ago to take measurements, when it was accompanying Lehtis and the Asteria boat to the Golden Globe Race solo sailing around the globe in Les Sables-d’Olonne, France.

“I’m really disappointed with how the French handled it. They ruined our summer graduation. The team has done more than 15,000 working hours when the boat has been prepared together for this race. We had to have five weeks to trim and finish the boat. Instead, we spent five weeks repairing the boat,” Lehtinen laments.

“The French had done contrary to what had been agreed. Now all the parts of the boat have been gone through, rivets and nuts and the tension of the cables has been measured. The boat will last.”

Lehtinen’s Golden Globe Race ended last November when Asteria hit a shipping container on the border between the Indian Ocean and the Arctic Ocean, far from the mainland.

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“Galiana is one of the slowest boats in the race because its waterline is short.”

Asteria sank to a depth of five kilometers, and Lehtinen had time to jump into the life raft.

However, even severe trials did not discourage Lehtis, who has been boiled in many broths, and now he is going to sea again with his young team.

One of Lehtinen’s goals is to train more open sea sailors in Finland and thereby continue the traditions of the sport.

The average age of Galiana’s team is among the youngest in the competition. According to the rules, there must be men and women in the boats. The exception is the Maiden boat, which has an all-female team.

In addition, there must be at least one person under the age of 25 in the boat. Galiana has two of them: Wait Moisio and Kaisla Jacoby.

“Galiana is one of the slowest boats in the race because its waterline is short. Our strength is a strong team spirit, when the team has been together for a long time. Those who sail in many boats meet each other for the first time only now,” says Lehtinen.

Ocean The Globe Race is a 50-year throwback to the first such sailing in 1973, then known as the Whitbread Round the World Race after its sponsor.

The first Whitbread was won by the Mexican yacht Sayula II, which went almost all the way around with its masts during the race.

“If the boat capsizes, it’s not yet a disaster. Now we have a bombproof mast and a welded team. The goal is to reach the finish line intact,” says Lehtinen, who sailed for the first time in Whitbread as watch chief on Skopbank of Finland in the 1982 race.

Now he is going to circumnavigate the globe on a sailboat for the fourth time. In 2019, he finished fifth and last in his first Golden Globe Race, when the bottom of the Asteria was full of crustaceans, goosenecks.

Ocean The Globe Race is sailed in four stages. The first stop is in Cape Town. The distance to the tip of South Africa is 6,650 nautical miles from Southampton, more than 12,300 kilometers.

Another leg of the same length starts on November 5 from Cape Town to Auckland, New Zealand.

The third leg of the 8,370 nautical mile (15,500 km) leg will begin in Auckland on January 14, 2024. The boats will circle Cape Horn and arrive at the leg finish in Punta del Este, Uruguay in February.

The last leg will start on March 5th towards the finish in Southampton, where the first boats of the fourteen starting boats will arrive at the beginning of April.

The boats are divided into three categories according to length. Galiana competes in the Adventure class with the shortest waterline. The second Finnish boat of the race, Spirit of Finland, sails in the Sayla class.

In total, no fewer than 31 Finns are participating in the competition at different stages. Galiana’s team remains the same, but Jussi Paavosepän skippered by Spirit of Finland, the team changes during the race. Most of the participants are French sailors, almost 90.

“The length of the waterline determines the maximum speed. Based on that, it is forgivable that we are the last to arrive at all the ports of call. The mathematical equalization system IRC evens out the differences a bit, but even that doesn’t help so much that Galiana would be better than others. We shouldn’t have any problems sailing faster than others, but the practice may be different”, Lehtinen weighed Galiana’s possibilities.

How many boats will arrive at this same port in April?

“That’s a damn good question. It definitely hurts and happens.”

The Ocean Globe Race of around-the-world sailing starts on Sunday at 15:00 Finnish time from Southampton.

Read more: The mast broke, the crew became seasick – Tapio Lehtinen tells about the real situation

Read more: Kirsten Neuschäfer rescued shipwrecked Tapio Lehtinen from the middle of the ocean – the Finn’s character completely surprised

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