Jonny Malbon onboard Artemis finished the fourth and final leg of the 2010 Solitaire du Figaro in the early hours of this morning in 39th position, four and a half hours behind leg winner Armel Le Cleac’h (BRIT AIR). Following closely behind were Corentin Douguet in 2nd and François Gabart 3rd, completing the Leg 4 podium within ten minutes of each other!


Jonny got off to a strong start on the 435-mile fourth and final leg, rounding the first turning mark in 15th place as the fleet headed along the Irish coast to the Fastnet lighthouse. Jonny explains, “It was full-on, a really hard leg. I had a fantastic start and was really happy. Then the first night was difficult deciding whether to put the big spi up straight away or not, but I waited a little longer then put the spi up and then bosh! You’re in to 30-35 knots of wind and massive sea-state! It was pretty cool - charging along surfing - I think I hit 17 knots a couple of times, with full main and the big spi! No chance for sleep or anything!”

After a tough and challenging first night the wind eased on the second day to a more manageable 15 knots and the key decision the skippers had to make was when to gybe for the final turning mark…

“Then the clouds parted a bit and it got lighter, and I was in a really good spot with JoJo and ahead of Banque Populaire and just behind Francisco Lobato (top 20), so I was pretty happy with that. Then it was all about the gybe and I gybed with all the others, but then I just couldn’t get the boat going, I don’t know why, I watched people just sail over the top of me. The wind didn’t actually do what we expected it to do - it was so frustrating…”


“I knew it would be windy at Cap de La Hague (NW corner of Cherbourg Peninsula) so I set myself up so I’d gybe just after the lighthouse in the shallows, and I did and it worked really well. I had a really lovely, perfect gybe and I smoked two people on the corner coming from Alderney because they didn’t have spinnaker up. So I went racing through, gybed, took the pole off and the pole wouldn’t come off the sheet – it had wrapped up with the brace a bit of a mess, and it all happening in 25-28knots of breeze, so the last bit was difficult and I was really happy to get to Cherbourg!”

After four full on racing legs the lack of sleep catches up with the sailors, and a final windy leg added quickly to the fatigue: “It was really tiring – the first night you couldn’t stop to sleep because you were tacking on the coast on the rocks all the way down to the Fastnet rock, then as soon as we got there it was 20-25knots downwind. I’m really tired – I think I’ve only had 30mins sleep on this leg.”

“This leg was both good and bad – gutted because on the first night I was right up there, but one thing that really cheered me up last night was when I was speaking to Yann Elies (who finished 2nd overall in 2009 but 24th this year) - he said ‘you’ve learnt a lot since last year - you’re getting there…’ and he’s right.”


The 2010 Solitaire du Figaro was the 41st edition of this classic solo endurance race. Forty-four competitors competed over four legs totalling 1,717 miles from Le Havre (France) to Gijon (Spain) to Brest (France) then across the English Channel to Kinsale (Ireland) and finishing in Cherbourg (France).  The Solitaire is renowned for its intense competition with the fleet racing in sight of each other and often finishing the legs within minutes of each other. On penultimate leg from Brest to Kinsale only 1 minute and 17 seconds separated the leg winner Adrien Hardy from Yann Elies in second place after racing 350 miles!

The overall result is based on cumulative time and the 2010 Solitaire du Figaro overall winner was Armel Le Cleac’h, who unusually took victory in three of the four legs, completing the four legs in a time of 252 hours, 55 minutes and 3 seconds.  Jonny’s final overall time was 272 hours, 6 minutes and 43 seconds, in 44th place in the overall rankings. Finishing only 19 hours, 11 minutes and 40 seconds behind the overall winner after over 1700 miles of racing is testament to Jonny’s training this winter and his improving race performance. Although his overall result in this aggregate time event was hampered by the failure of his autopilot ram on leg 2, costing him around 6 hours, Jonny has consistently been able to stay with the main fleet compared to his previous participation last year.

Click here to listen to Jonny thoughts on Leg 4 and his 2010 Solitaire du Figaro (Audio section).

Summary of Jonny’s 2010 Solitaire du Figaro

Prologue: Le Havre, 26th July
Result: 17th place in the traditional pre-event Prologue.
“This time last year, I would not have been capable of that result. It does not mean that things are going to be easy of course, but it’s certainly morale-boosting.” The two-hour race was won by France’s current Singlehanded Offshore National Champion Gildas Morvan.

Leg 1: Le Havre to Gijon, 27th July – 31st July
Result: 36th place, arriving 3 hours, 47 minutes, 13 seconds after the leg winner, Armel Le Cleac’h’s time of 83 hours, 14 minutes, 32 seconds.
The first leg was brutal on the sailors with tricky coastal racing and crossing the notorious Bay of Biscay. Light conditions did not allow for much sleep and Jonny only managed to get 3 hours sleep out of 3 days and 15 hours: “I was a bit upset not to be slightly higher up the rankings, but on the flipside of that I’m happy because I’ve stayed in touch with everybody and I feel I’ve sailed a good race. Tactically I played in the middle and for a while I was 22nd or 23rd whilst to the east the boats were suffering - at that time we did not really know the guys in the west were doing so well - and it was tricky to keep the speed up with the spinnaker in light winds and choppy seas. The positive thing was to have boats around me, I realised I had the same speed so it was frustrating for everybody. But at least I wasn’t stressing on my own thinking I was slower than the others.”

Leg 2: Gijon to Brest, 3rd – 6th August
Result: 44th place, arriving 9 hours, 51 minutes, 45 seconds after leg winner Armel Le Cleac’h’s time of 60 hours, 44 minutes, 40 seconds
A broken autopilot forced Jonny to spend extended periods on the helm. Jonny took a good start and was lying 12th at the end of the first day but then dropped to the back of the fleet. Being forced to helm most of the time involves spending a minimum amount of time at the navigation station which naturally has a negative impact on race strategy, and the same goes for managing sleep or food. The second leg starting off in light conditions but were soon replaced by strong winds and choppy seas as the fleet recrossed the Bay of Biscay. Only managing less than 3 hours sleep on the whole leg, Jonny suffered vivid hallucinations bought on by sleep deprivation but he did not ‘throw in the towel’ and was applauded by his fellow competitors on reaching Brest.

Leg 3: Brest to Kinsale, 9th – 11th August
Result: 41st place, arriving 1 hour, 19 minutes, 18 seconds after leg winner Adrien Hardy’s time of 54 hours, 8 minutes, 45 seconds.
A challenging leg with strong winds, rain, less than seasonal temperatures and fog. Jonny undoubtedly found the leg hard work having not fully recovered the trials of leg 2: “It was hard in places, the start was great and tacking in the Raz de Brest was fantastic - not difficult but everyone was pushing it right up to the rocks. Then it got a bit more difficult… I had an accident when I got my spinnaker wrapped around the forestay in a gybe which was a bit frustrating and I lost a bit of time.  The second day was harder, the weather was horrible – grey, miserable, strong, strong winds and visibility was really bad. I managed to get a big cut in my hand after picking up a fish hook in my spinnaker sheet which I didn’t see when I was cleaning it and it ripped through my hand.”

Leg 4: Kinsale to Cherbourg, 16th – 19th August
Result: 39th place, arriving 4 hour, 30 minutes, 16 seconds after leg winner Armel Le Cleac’h’s time of 54 hours, 30 minutes, 24 seconds.
Jonny got off to a strong start rounding the first rounding mark, the traditional Radio France Buoy, in 15th place.  A tactical beat to the historic Fastnet Rock rock-hopping to keep out of the current, was followed by a full on windy spinnaker leg to the NW coast of France with boatspeeds reaching 17kts, and full ‘green’ water across the boat. After turning at the French coast the fleet sailed in lighter conditions still downwind past the Channel Islands, before the wind increased again, and gave an extraordinary sail across the Alderney tidal race, up the Cherboug Peninsular. The final manoeuvre of the race was a gybe off Cap de la Hague, during which Jonny managed to sneak inside two boats making the turn further offshore, but also experienced a difficult spinnaker problem, with the light weight sail getting tangled with the forestay, making a memorable sail into Cherbourg.