2025 Class Globe Transatlantic Race and MGR Qualifier
After several years of planning, and two prior ALMA Class Globe 580 transatlantic races, the first steps towards the start of the Mini Globe Race (MGR), which begins in Antigua on 23 February, 2025, have taken place, with a warm-up, shake-up, shake-down cruise from Marina de Lagos, Portugal, to Marina Rubicon in Lanzarote, Canary Islands, to be followed by the 2025 ALMA Class Globe Transatlantic Race, which serves as a qualifier for the MGR. On 28 December, the passage got underway in light winds and a two-metre swell, which made for some interesting manouvering among the fleet. Ironically, two of the UK entrants, Adam Waugh on LITTLE WREN, and Jasmine Harrison, on NUMBATOU, had departed a day early to avoid strong headwinds.
Adding to the fun was the wake from Race Founder, and Ocean Frontiers CEO, Don McIntyre’s large RIB, and an even bigger RIB called TORNADO, carrying family and friends of the entrants. There was some confusion on the start line, with several boats heading the wrong way, and often losing steerage way altogether, but the general consensus is that Australian sailor, John Blenkinsop, on DELJA 100, was first over the line. However, before long, his father Mike Blenkinsop, who is now known as Popeye, complete with tattoos on his arms to match, was well ahead of his son, flying his red-coloured, A5 tri-radial asymmetrical spinnaker aboard DELJA 99.
These boats carry three tri-radial asymmetrical spinnakers, set on top-down furlers, the A3, which is the biggest light-air drifter, the smaller A5, for moderate winds, and a recent addition, the smallest, known as the A7, designed to be set in stronger winds, sometimes poled out opposite the working jib. In future, they will just be referred to as the A3, 5 or 7.
It was not long before the serious racers in the fleet began to show their mettle, with Swiss sailor, Renaud Stitelmanm on CAPUCINETTE, powering up under his white A5, while Niels Kamphuis, from the Netherlands, aboard BIGGEST MONKEY, went off on the other tack, concentrating on helming to maximum advantage. His boat is so-named because he is a very large man, and that is his nickname. He certainly makes the ALMA Class Globe 580 look even smaller than usual. Niels is just competing in the 2025 Transatlantic Race, and his boat is the most stripped-out of the fleet. As he says, it gives him more room below!
Spanish sailor, Pilar Pasanau, on PETER PUNK, is a very experienced ocean voyager, with numerous Atlantic crossings under her belt, some of them alone, and must be considered a serious contender for MGR line honours, but she was in the middle of the fleet leaving Lagos. In these conditions, luck plays a part in who gets a puff of wind to carry them clear of the pack and out into cleaner air. She was not to stay at the back of the fleet for long.
Jakub Ziemkiewicz, aboard BIBI, looked very relaxed at the start. This Polish resident of Ireland, sailing under the Irish flag, lives permanently aboard BIBI, and is carrying everything from a dinghy to a library of books aboard. BIBI is the most down on its marks of the entire fleet. Jakub was actually reclining on his cockpit seat, looking more like he was enjoying a day at the beach rather than setting off to race across the Atlantic.
Christian Sauer, from Germany, was still building ARGO when he arrived at Marina de Lagos a few weeks ago, so crossing the starting line with the other entrants was a considerable achievement. With his bright green sails and distinctive hull graphics, it was hard to miss him. Understandably, he was smiling ebulliently as the committee boat cruised past. He certainly won the race against time, and that level of commitment bodes well for his participation in the MGR. Notably, he has one of the finest main hatch dodgers in the fleet. This is a feature that Don McIntyre has stressed the value of numerous times, in the effort to keep the interior dry, but not all entrants have taken heed. Don went one step further, by having side screens inside the companionway, to keep his bunks dry.
Canadian entrant, Dan Turk, also looked to be in cruising mode, flying his mainsail and working jib, very much the relaxed ocean voyager, having successfully sailed LITTLE BEA across the North Atlantic in the high latitudes earlier. However, he spent a season racing LITTLE BEA in the Great Lakes the previous summer, and knows his boat well. He will be a skipper to watch.
Retired British naval captain, Keri Harris, who is now an artist living in France, and campaigning ORIGAMI, seemed to be missing in action on the starting line, but he is a keen offshore racing sailor, with a wealth of experience, and must be considered a serious contender for MGR line honours. It was not long before he began to climb up the leader board, and if a bold move to sail east of the fleet towards Morrocco had paid off, he might well have won line honours on this first leg.
Dan Turner, on IMMORTAL GAME, one of the five Australian MGR skippers, is another serious contender, being a veteran long-distance, short-handed ocean racer, and all-round endurance adventurer. Anyone who competes successfully in a 265km foot race across the Sahara Desert deserves respect. However, he was treating this passage very much as a cruise, getting to know the boat and sorting out his systems. He was also looking very relaxed as he headed out towards the Canary Islands. Getting his boat ready in time, after its arrival from Australia in a shipping container was seriously delayed, was a mad rush, only achieved with the support of his wife, Nikki, other friends and fellow entrants. Mike and John Blenkinsop, on DELJA 99 and DELJA 100, experienced similar delays, though they had a little more time to prepare. Building boats on the other side of the world and shipping them to Europe can be a logistical nightmare.
Everybody had a rough first night at sea, as one often does if the weather kicks up a little. NUMBATOU, having left a day earlier, did not escape the rough weather, and Jasmine found it particularly hard going. Despite having rowed across the Atlantic alone, and swum the length of the east coast of England, from London to Scotland, she found sailing more complex (lots of extra ropes to adjust) and broached a few times. During one of these manoeuvres, she was struck on the head by the boom, fortunately without serious injury, though the boat ended up getting soaked down below.
Adam Waugh also dug the bows in a couple of times during his first day at sea, before he took the mainsail off LITTLE WREN and sailed with twin headsails on this mostly downwind passage (as most of the circumnavigation will be) poled out either side with twin poles, each of which has its own mast fitting. He has twin jibs setting on the same roller-furling unit, and used them to good effect. He also found his twin daggerboards on the transom useful, to steady the ship while sailing under this configuration. His only damage on the passage was a small crack on the aft side of the port daggerboard casing. Having set his boat up this way, he found that the South Atlantic servo-pendulum windvane gear handled the boat perfectly well. One can also pole the jib out on one side and the A7 on the other, or in light winds, the A3 opposite the A5.
Adam had no trouble with sleeping patterns, sometimes sleeping for several hours when there were no ships around, though there were periods when sleep was more difficult because of traffic. He left his AIS on all the time, and his Echomax also alerted him to ships, some of which were up to 20 miles away. As is so often the case, despite being the fastest, Adam arrived looking relaxed and refreshed.
Renaud Stitelmann was 2nd over the line on CAPUCINETTE. Like Adam, he was looking relaxed and well rested, full of good humour. He also flew twin jibs off the same furler, and sang the praises of his Hydrovane, which steered the boat effortlessly all the way. Unlike many of the others, he cooked hearty meals every day, and even baked cakes and bread. If there was an award named the John Guzzwell Culinary Standard, surely Renaud would be the prime contender. Guzzwell was famous for the cakes, puddings and hearty stews he produced on passage aboard TREKKA. One of Renaud’s great advantages is that he has had considerable experience passage-making on this boat. CAPUCINETTE was dry below, and his energy systems fully charged upon arrival (he came in at night with all his lights blazing). Everything worked perfectly and there were no breakages. The boat was running like a Swiss watch!
PETER PUNK was 3rd over the line. Everybody, from race management to the other entrants, were commenting on how fast Pilar Pasanau was sailing, and realising that she was going to be serious competition in the months ahead. A decision to go west while approaching landfall, based on an inaccurate weather report suggesting stronger winds on that side of the island, ultimately cost her an even better podium finish. She was obviously tired and hungry when she arrived. She reported that her autopilot proved too weak (there is a restriction on the size allowed) when driving the boat hard, and that she had not yet worked out how to use her Windpilot servo-pendulum windvane gear. She hand-steered for long hours. It is obvious that once Pilar gets to know PETER PUNK better, she is going to be very competitive.
Dan Turk was 4th over the line. He is another sailor who has chosen the simplicity of hanked-on jibs and is happy with his choice. He uses a downhaul to tame the sail, along with putting tension on the clew when lowered. Sometimes he adds a sail tie to the middle after lowering, to contain the belly of the sail. Despite losing all his electrics due to a mistake he made shortly after departing Lagos (he charged his outboard motor from the ship’s batteries, not realising they were already low), Dan had an uneventful trip, never seeing more than 23 knots of wind over the deck, flying his A5 for 500 of the 600nm passage, and keeping the interior bone dry. The windvane steered the boat most of the time, but when the going got light towards the end, he hand-steered, and consequently was very tired on arrival. Bea was his grandmother’s name, and his mother’s middle name, and this respect gives one the measure of the man. Barring unforeseeable circumstances, one would have to say that Dan will cross the finish line in Antigua without difficulty in March 2026.
Niels, who arrived 5th, preferred to hand steer BIGGEST MONKEY most of the way, both because he finds driving the boat hard to be good fun, and because he felt he could achieve higher speeds for longer periods, just reducing sail and self-steering with his Windpilot unit when he needed rest. Nonetheless, he was not tired when he arrived, and he reported the boat remained dry below. He did not use his electronic autopilot. He agreed with Kerri Harris that his roller-reefing headsail added windage, but did not mention any intention of removing it.
Whether one can race 3000 miles this way, let alone around the world, remains to be seen, though John Guzzwell regularly hand-steered TREKKA during the day, reducing sail to enable self-steering after sunset, except when he was in steady tradewinds, and using his twin jibs with sheets to the tiller. He regularly made fast passages. It will, in part, be determined by the stamina and willpower of the skippers, and also by their ability to get the most out of their boats under different circumstances.
There is considerable discussion about windvanes among the fleet, with a number choosing to fit Hydrovane gears at the last minute, after struggling to master usage of the South Atlantic windvane units. Adam Waugh, however, echoing comments from Don McIntyre, has clearly shown that the South Atlantic units are effective when the rig is balanced. So far, the sailors with Hydrovanes report that they are delighted with the ease of using them, but whether these units provide a performance advantage on the longer legs remains to be seen.
Keri Harris, on ORIGAMI, arrived shortly after Niels in the middle of the night, to take 6th place. Arriving after dark seems to have been a common phenomenon on this leg, with the result that the welcoming committee were somewhat sleep deprived, as well as the sailors. Another keen racing sailor, Keri has also chosen to go with hanked-on headsails rather than using roller-reefing for the jib, using a downhaul to control the working sail when dropping it. Everyone thought he had superior weather reports when he drove east down the Moroccan coast, but he reported that he just went that way to keep the boat moving well. He felt that he’d be in a good position if the wind should come in hard from the south, but unfortunately for him, it didn’t do so until after he had finished. He was another sailor who had not set up his windvane properly, and had to hand-steer much of the time. He was hoping to master it during his layover in Lanzarote.
John Blenkinsop, on DELJA 100, was next over the line to secure 7th position. He had an effortless sail, with the Hydrovane doing all the steering while he concentrated on experimenting with rig configurations. He had every sail on the boat up and down at least three or four times, trying out different configurations. DELJA 100 was very fast, and looking like a serious contender, until they sailed into the wind hole in which many others in the fleet also parked up. (Wily Renaud, of course, knew it was there and sailed around it.) Like many others in the fleet, the last day proved the hardest sailing for John, with 25-30 knot headwinds and steep, two-metre seas slowing progress. However, he could not help comparing this trip to his trial sail in Australia, from Mooloolaba to Coffs Harbour and back, when the inability to get the boat to self-steer left both him and his father, Mike (aka Popeye) suffering sleep deprivation and exhaustion. In contrast, this time he arrived totally rested and relaxed, noting that he would have liked to just keep going to Antigua.
ARGO, with its distinctive green sails and wavy stripes on the hull, was the next boat in, to take 8th position, close behind John. Christian Sauer had only sailed ARGO for two hours before departing Lagos, as he was still building the boat. When he arrived in Marina Rubicon, Lanzarote, he lamented that weather conditions on the way down were not really conducive to getting out the tools and continuing with the work! Nothing broke on the way down, and he was thrilled to have made it to Lanzarote against the odds in his home-built boat. He saw a number of other entrants during this leg, most notably Jasmine Harrison on NUMBATOU, with whom he traded places several times. He’d be ahead during the day, then wake in the morning to find she had snuck past in the dark. ‘I don’t know what she does,’ he grinned ruefully. He had been seasick for the first two days as well, and just let the boat take care of him.
Besides all the gear that still needs to be fitted, such as his wind generator, which was somehow left behind in Lagos, but generously delivered to Lanzarote by Kerri Harris on ORIGAMI, he had some difficulty with his Windpilot self-steering gear. He felt that his solar panels interfered with wind flow over the vane, and plans to lower them. Plus, he thought that turbulence from his transom-mounted daggerboards interfered with the self-steering’s servo-pendulum. He acknowledged that he was still learning how to get the best out of the boat. Like may other entrants, he struggled to drive the boat to weather in the strong southerly winds and short, steep seas that beset the fleet off the northern end of Lanzarote. However, his cheerful ‘can-do’ spirit is bound to carry him forward.
Jakub Ziemkiewicz might have looked like he was just cruising when he crossed the starting line, but despite being the heaviest boat in the fleet, BIBI was 9th over the line. BIBI is another boat with hanked-on headsails, so perhaps Jakub is a secret racer after all, though he notes that he has never sailed in a yacht race before. He said that had a very entertaining trip, though he did not find time to dip into his onboard library. He spent a lot of time eating and sleeping, though, which indicates, as Don McIntyre points out, that he has mastered his windvane well. At one stage he was sailing close to Christian Sauer on ARGO, and took some great photos which we hope to see in due course. One night, BIBI was surrounded by the lights of other 580s. “It was like a disco,’ he laughed. He invited Christian and Jasmine, via his VHF radio, to come over and share a dram of Irish Whisky, but they regretfully declined.
He had two scary incidents, the first a close encounter with waterspouts, and the second with a mysterious ship that was on a collision course. When he contacted the ship, it switched off its AIS, forcing him to change course from a dead run to close-hauled, to gain speed and get away from them. He says the sea teaches you to be humble, and he is just taking things one day at a time. He hopes to go all the way around, but will see what the Atlantic brings.
This first passage from Lagos is intended as a ‘warm-up’, to allow skippers to get to know their boats, though Jasmine did not find the weather quite as warm as she’d hoped. Being constantly damp and salty, above and below deck, did not help. She also had a steep learning curve when it came to handing the boat. The first night out of Lagos was particularly difficult for her. As many 580 skippers have discovered, it pays to get the main off these boats early, or at least deeply reefed, when wind and sea get up aft of the beam. Later, she suffered the opposite extreme of being becalmed for long periods. After completing her 500-mile qualifying distance, she was given permission to accept a tow into port, to give her more time to work on the boat before the start of the next leg on 11 January. Nonetheless, despite her difficulties, she expressed a strong intention to continue on and circumnavigate the world. It is all fun, as far as she is concerned, even the tough bits. NUMBATOU was the 10th boat into Marina Rubicon.
Mike Blenkinsop, on DELJA 99, held a commanding position while the fleet worked its way out of the bay at Lagos in light airs, but for much of the passage he looked set to be last home. In the end, he was the 11th boat to arrive. After a tough first night, like most of the fleet, when he pushed the boat a bit hard, he settled into cruising mode, reading three books during his week at sea, and struggling with light airs and a wind hole at one point. He enjoyed himself though, and nothing broke. The Hydrovane self-steering gear handled the helm all the way apart from about two hours, despite Mike not have any experience using it before the start. ‘It is just so easy,’ he said. ‘There is only one control.’
His only complaint was about food. He did not take Don McIntyre’s advice to carry plenty of wet food, apart from tuna. Not wanting to use his Jetboil stove, because the weather was too hot, and because he was unfamiliar with it, he didn’t eat any of his dried food, of which he carries an abundant and varied supply. ‘I am sick of canned tuna,’ he said with a humorous grimace. He left Lagos with an abundant supply of fresh fruit, however, which lasted five days. Asked why he and John were doing this event, he recalled their earlier attempt at a circumnavigation, which ended when John suffered a serious accident, rupturing his kidney in a bad fall down a hatch. Besides which, he added with a chuckle, they always argued when sailing together. This way, each ran his own vessel and helped the other in port.
Mike’s one big drama was almost being run down by a French singlehander at night, whose vessel was carrying no lights. Mike was in the habit of coming on deck every couple of hours for a good look around, and just happened to do so at the right time, allowing him to take avoiding action. He was in puckish good humour when he stepped ashore, proudly showing off his recent Popeye tattoos to a welcoming committee comprising most of the 580 skippers. Led by MGR founder, Don McIntyre, and events / public relations officer, Aida Valceanu, the welcoming committee launched into a lusty rendition of ‘Popeye the Sailorman’. As Don said, the Vendee Globe crowd would be falling over themselves laughing while watching these antics, but Ocean Frontier events are all about human stories.
Last but not least, Dan Turner finally arrived aboard IMMORTAL GAME, the 12th boat home. Like a true Aussie larrikin, he decided to stop off at another marina in the north of the island for a ‘holiday’, since there was little wind to carry his ship onward. He had to tell a white lie that IMMORTAL GAME needed attention to be allowed to stay for 48 hours. Perhaps it can be attributed to a ‘mental health’ sickie, though he looked too relaxed, and was thoroughly enjoying himself when other 580 skippers drove up to pay him a visit.
For a while there, nonetheless, Dan had looked very competitive (this leg wasn’t a race, as Don McIntrye said more than once, it just looked like one), until the wind abandoned IMMORTAL GAME. Apart from the first 36 hours, when he slept little, due to strong winds and other boat traffic, Dan settled in well to his routines, eating well and sleeping long hours. He became more competitive when approaching Lanzarote, drawing on his well-stocked sleep bank, until the wind made a mockery of ambition.
‘For someone so experience in long-distance racing,’ Aida asked, ‘why did you come last?’ Dan just laughed. He is hugely experienced, both in long-distance, short-handed ocean racing, and in endurance feats. Once he has his boat properly set up, and the racing is for real, he will be someone to watch.
The great takeaway from listening to these skippers talk about their passages south from Lagos, and inspecting their amazing boats gathered together in Marina Rubicon (looking very much like a fleet of serious around-the-world yachts) is that nobody has had any serious issues with their boats, all are eager to sail on, and the spirit of camaraderie among the fleet is extraordinary. This is truly a unique event, both highly professional in organisation, and yet still somewhat home-spun. It is delivering what it promised; a fully-fledged around-the-world yacht race at prices the average person with a bit of grit can afford. Sure, you can build a 20ft yacht and sail it around the world alone for a lot less, but if competing in an international circumnavigation race, with all the challenges and charms that such events offer, is what you desire, then there is nothing like it under the sun.
For me, there is another attraction to this event. With the advantages that satellite communication offer, it will permit a glimpse into the world inhabited by one of my greatest heroes, John Guzzwell, on 20ft 6in TREKKA, 70 years ago. Technology may have changed, but the sea remains the same.
