There is a reason the Figaro Class has a Rookie prize in every event they run. And it is highly sought after writes Marcus Hutchinson.
The French call it the Bizuth prize. In the Solo Arrimer there were six 'Bizuths', three French two British and one Irish.
Starting out in this singlehanded game is tough, not only because it IS really, really tough!!!! but because you don't really know what you are getting into in detail until you actually go and do it, a few times, in a range of different conditions. You only learn and get better from practice.
Figaro sailing is not just about learning how to manouvere the boat by yourself and find fast sail settings and manage the transitions and be tactically astute.
A long offshore race is tough for anyone. But until you go and try and do all of those things by yourself, for a long, long time you wont understand the importance of the different parts of preparation. Hence, real reward for the Rookies.
Along with his Artemis Offshore Academy Rooky buddies Ed Hill and Jack Bouttell, David Kenefick has been slowly ramping up his exposure to longer and longer races, to races with more and more entries and a higher standard and to racing in complex parts of the world with tide, rocks, Atlantic depressions, cold and wet.
This event, the Solo Arrimer, is the next step in that path and there will be another similar race in three weeks time in Concarneau. Three weeks after that the Rookies, along with everyone else who enters the Solitaire du Figaro will be doing four slightly longer races back to back with just a couple of days recovery time between each leg. This is a truly epic sporting undertaking for a young man or woman to undertake and it needs to be taken seriously.
No one is under illusions about what is involved in supporting the Artemis team and David. Those three young men are beginning to now understand more and more about how much they didn't know.
When they started they didn't know what they didn't know, now they are beginning to learn what it is they don't know and soon they will know everything that they don't know.
Only then can they go about removing the long list of don't knows and become experienced. You are a Rookie for one season only. It is rare indeed for a Rookie to finish in the top five. Over that last 44 years of the race a Rookie has placed in the top five on only a handful of occasions.