Neal McDonald story:
An unusual gust in the middle of the nite….
It was the first nite of the Fastnet 1999 on board the South African Grand Mistral Rainbow Magic. We had a great team and had just won the inshore regatta in the solent. The start was a reasonably sedate and all the Grand mistrals popped out the solent nicely and had settle down to some VMG running in a nice easterly breeze. My watch was first to get our heads down and from what I remember the 4cast was for nothing to brisk.
I’d probably been asleep for a couple of hours to be awoken by Paul Stainbrige shouting all hands on deck, come up the aft hatch! The tone of Paul got my attention -it was far from his normal relaxed self and arriving on deck I quickly got a handle on why. If was blowing hard – 40 plus from memory. It was pitch dark and it took a few seconds to get my nite vison and get a feel for the situation. The boat was in control but going like a bat out of hell but there we several people looking pretty out of their comfort zone. One thing I was not concerned about was the driver, we certainly had our best foot forward there, Jim Close was at the wheel and while most of us were feeling the kite and full main were above the sensible limit, I could see that Jim was just really enjoying it and up for more!
He looked like he could keep sailing like this all nite! However the call was made to drop the kite although no sooner had we got it down the wind died as quickly as it came up.
It was 20 minutes of sailing I will not 4get!
…..Neal McDonald
About
Something about him that you don’t know: He’s a qualified naval architect and a member of the Royal Corps of Naval Constructors. Who he is: A mainstay of the modern Volvo Ocean Race era, 2017-18 will be Neal’s seventh Volvo Ocean Race and his second in a non-sailing role. A former Olympian and dinghy world champion, his first lap of the world was with Silk Cut in the 1997-98 Whitbread Race. He then skippered Assa Abloy into second place in 2001-02, finished fifth in 2005-06 as skipper of Ericsson, and was fifth again in 2008-09 with Ian Walker on Green Dragon. He returned in 2011-12 onboard Team Telefónica, finishing fourth, before signing up for an onboard role with winning campaign Abu Dhabi Ocean Racing last edition – even dusting off his sea boots to sail a couple of legs.
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