Lewis Hamilton's crash course in life at sea

Tag : boat rail

This was Hamilton's first experience on a sailing yacht and he (orhis sponsors) had certainly picked some boat on which to get hissea legs. About as far removed from a Mirror dinghy or familysailing cruiser as you can get, the 60ft Hugo Boss could well bedescribed as a Formula One car of the sea, a superfast, highlydangerous machine with a bewildering complexity of rigging and sailcontrols.
To start with, Hamilton looked wary as he staggered from one sideof the boat to the other in his black sailing gear, topped off witha black ski hat and the inevitable McLaren branded jacket. He spentthe first few minutes before the crash taking pictures with hismobile, sending texts and muttering about how “funny”it would be if someone fell overboard.
Then came the drama as the big yacht, with Alex Thomson, her soloround-the-world race skipper, at the wheel, approached the busystartline and found itself squeezed in between two smaller boatsand with nowhere to go.
After the incident there was no time to discuss it or the£30,000-worth of damage to the front of Hugo Boss. Thomsonand his team, who included Ben Ainslie, Britain's double sailinggold medal-winner, simply got their heads down and focused on thestart, which they pulled off superbly well.
Hamilton watched it all in silence and quickly began to get thehang of it. This was a serious racing machine, these guys meantbusiness and yacht racing was a highly technical sport. The PRpeople had told him about the similarities with Formula One and hewas beginning to see them for himself.
As we raced up the Solent, leading our class from the start, withHugo Boss tipped up at a crazily steep angle on one side or theother, Hamilton learnt how to move across the boat, becoming moresure-footed with each tack.
Thomson was an easy skipper to understand. “I don't care whatnationality you are, go and sit on the f***ing rail (side of theboat),” was his memorable instruction to one miscreant.McLaren were worried that Hamilton would immediately succumb tosea-sickness, but the Monaco Grand Prix winner was fine and theextra bucket stowed on board for that purpose was not used by him.
Halfway to the Needles - a sort of hairpin in the course - hejoined crewman Shaun Biddulph on the “grinder”, whichwinds in the ropes controlling the sails, and Hamilton was cursingwith exhaustion at the end of his first two-minute session.
“I'll have to have a word with McLaren about hisfitness,” Biddulph quipped.
Then it was Hamilton's turn on the steering wheel. Now there aretwo types of novice on a sailing boat. Some people are all over theplace and cannot grasp the relationship between the boat and theinvisible force of the wind; others pick it up quickly and seem tohave an instinctive feel. Hamilton was in the second category.Thomson wanted to win his class in the race, which we did (until wewere subsequently disqualified for our part in the crash). But hewas happy to let Hamilton drive for a good 25 minutes. Had he beena “numpty”, as they say in sailing, he would have beenrelieved pretty sharpish.
Admittedly, Hamilton had a world-class sailing master to guide himin Ainslie, who explained the significance of the information onthe digital read-outs showing boat speed, wind angle and wind speedand quietly prompted him — “a little to the left (port)Lewis, a little to the right (starboard)” and so on.
Hamilton seemed to jerk the wheel a bit initially but he graduallyfound a smooth rhythm and was able to hold his course and switchthe boat from one side of the wind to the other with someconfidence.
“You do feel part of the boat - you do feel what it'sdoing,” said the man regarded as one of the most instinctivedrivers in Formula One. “The boat suits my driving style,quite smooth and responsive. It's a similar feel to driving thecar.”
He found the yacht hugely impressive, in general. “This isthe first time for me on a sailing boat,” Hamilton said.“Although I have known for a while I was doing this, I hadabsolutely no idea what to expect. The boat is very, very technicaland the cool thing is it's got a lot in common with Formula One— it's fully carbon-fibre and it's very, very complex. Idon't know what half of these things do on it. The whole experiencehas been mind-blowing.”
When David Coulthard drove for McLaren, he used to go down for aday on Thomson's yacht — a previous Hugo Boss — butthere was never any wind. Hamilton seems to kick up a stormwherever he goes and there was no shortage of natural horsepowerfor his nautical debut. Racing down the outside of the Isle ofWight, he and everyone else on board got a taste of the SouthernOcean as Ainslie ripped the boat down big waves at full speed(25mph) while the island shore passed us by in a blur of fog andspray.
Hamilton had another go on the wheel as we came back into theSolent and at the finish sprayed his crew-mates with the obligatorychampagne. It had been a cracking day that, the pre-start crashapart, had gone as well as Thomson could have hoped.
“I know it's a bit slower than Formula One but there is somuch going on back here,” Hamilton said in the cockpitafterwards. “I've had a go at a few things and it's justphenomenal what's going on. You just have this buzz the whole time— it's really cool.”