Just kidding!! But it does work Michele Desjoyeaux's technique during the Vendee Globe race in 2000...ya gotta read this! Not sure if anyone else remembers this from back then...right up there in terms of ingenuity with Yves Parlier amazing fix of his carbon fiber mast after he dismasted, sitting at anchor in NZ, while he collected seaweed to supplement his diminishing food...

http://www.vendeeglobe.org/en/magazines/8208/2000-the-mainsail-starter.html

It's the final day of the year 2000. On board PRB, sailing in the South Pacific at the front of the Vendée Globe fleet, Michel Desjoyeaux starts the new year with everything looking rosy. He has just made it through a high-pressure area, which is likely to slow down Roland Jourdain and Ellen MacArthur, his two closest rivals and he is making good headway towards Cape Horn. All was going well until the next morning at 8h, when the phone rang in a flat in Paris. “The festivities are over as my starting motor is broken.” sighed the skipper from Port La Forêt.

Consternation
In ocean racing, the generator is absolutely vital for the production of electricity, which is required for the instruments and particularly when sailing solo, the autopilot. PRB does have a wind generator and solar panels to make up for a temporary loss of power, but without a starter, the problem is not just temporary. The wind generator is not really very efficient downwind, which is the usual condition in the Southern Ocean, where it is too dull for the solar panels to work. Desjoyeaux was having to spend long periods of time at the helm while trying to think of a way of getting his generator started, as it was difficult for him to imagine that he would fail in his sailing venture because of an engine problem.

The hotline
Back on land, the experts at Yanmar, who made PRB's engine, have set up a 37HP identical to Michel's in their workshop and have tried to get it started manually. After a lot of effort they manage it. This was good news for Michel, except that with just his bare hands and inside his boat, the task still looks impossible. Some good ideas were suggested by various people based around the same principle: «He would need to fit a belt around the fly-wheel with a second sheave put in place and with a series of ropes and blocks to something, which would power it.» But what? The «Professor», who has an innate skill at DIY let his imagination run free. For three days, his attempts failed. Until…… his Eureka moment.
Imagine the starting rope on an outboard or on a lawn mower. By pulling hard and fast on the rope wrapped around the pulley, the engine would start. On PRB, Desjoyeaux needed to find something more powerful than his biceps. He was to find the solution with the help of the wind. The starting rope, which was incidentally red, was guided via a series of blocks to the end of the boom.

Reaching resources to restart
Michel set his boat reaching, trimmed the mainsail in and then let it out. The pressure from the mainsail develops a huge amount of energy on the rope linked to the fly-wheel. On 4th January, the phone rang for Régine, Michel's partner. Behind the enthusiastic voice of the sailor, there was a divine noise: «Listen! Can't you hear?». The diesel engine was ticking over and would continue like that for hours, as Michel was not sure he would be able to start it again. Obviously, the task was not going to be easy. To do it well, the sailor needed to be alongside his engine ready to engage the pistons to start in the three cylinders as soon as the mainsail sheet is let out, which had to be done from inside the boat…

Epilogue
As the days went by, he got more and more used to the technique and the sailing mechanic was no longer worried. All he needed was enough wind to start the engine. Then, when he was back in the Atlantic, there would be the sunshine and upwind sailing, where he would be able to count on his wind generator and solar panels for additional power. This incident, which really upset Michel to the point, where we saw him crying with despair.

This was something we would only see much later on in a video, as it was kept secret until he finished, the winner back in Les Sables. In the same way, we can add that this secrecy still prevails particularly for those sailors from the Port-la-Forêt training Centre.
As if Peter’s problems could encourage Paul, or maybe they just do not like confessing things to people ashore, who are in a different world?
Once again in this Vendée, where the media coverage is even bigger, we are going to have to wait for the sailors to return to find out what has really been going on.

Patrice Carpentier