Former King Charles Primary School pupil Sam Goodchild recorded an excellent result in the Transat AG2R La Mondiale race, which finished on Monday.

Goodchild, an Artemis Offshore Academy sailor, along with team-mate Nick Cherry finished 12th overall despite being the youngest team in the fleet.

The only British entry Goodchild and Cherry sailed an average speed of 7.15knots over the 3890nm course during their 22 days 15 hours 59 minutes and 26 seconds at sea. Leaving Concarneau, France on the April 21, the 16 strong Figaro fleet passed the Canary Islands waypoint on the April 28, before Cercle Vert skippered by Gildas Morvan and Charlie Dalin, won the race, crossing the finish line in Gustavia finishing at 21:55:45 on May 13, 2012, after 22 days, eight hours, 55 minutes and 45 seconds.

Goodchild and Cherry, racing together in their first short-handed transatlantic race, at one stage held eighth place, but slipped back towards the end.

Goodchild, whose mother runs Falmouth backpackers hostel, explains: “The last few days of the trip have been the hardest. We have had a few problems, which we have been trying to keep on top of, mainly spinnaker problems and trying to keep them in one piece whilst having to do repairs quickly and get them back up and [the boat] back up to speed. The forestay was also a problem for us, however we didn’t lose as much time as we expected due to this, perhaps only 20 - 30 minutes along the route. It was initially very worrying as the mast lost a lot of support and we had to secure it to make sure it didn’t fall off the boat.”

The Artemis duo incurred problems with their spinnaker twice in the latter stage of the race.

For Goodchild though one of the highlights of the race was also tied into the most challenging, the last 36 hours: “The last few days of the race, which coincided with the worst bit of the race as we had to spend loads of time fixing our spinnakers, but the times in between when we were not fixing them were the best bits of the race. Really good sailing in the trade winds with 25knots of wind in shorts and a t-shirt under a full moon and loving life.”

Academy Performance Director John Thorn, added: “Whilst we share the disappointment of Sam and Nick having dropped out of the top 10 in the last few hours of the race, it’s been a great race for the Academy to participate in, with lots of learning for all the current and future Squad, not only the two sailors that competed.”

Sam Goodchild and Nick Cherry arrive in St Barts

“Knowing that Sam and Nick can be competitive over a long distance race [holding fifth place for some time] and finishing just over four hours from the podium after 22 days is confidence building for the Solitaire du Figaro which is coming up in just 30 days time. We’ll use their experience to develop our training programmes, and boost our technical knowledge to ensure race effecting downtime is limited in future. Although the damage to their forestay was less impactful on their result than the damage to the two large spinnakers, it could have been race ending and these kind of failures must be eradicated if we are to be successful.

The next big challenge for Sam Goodchild and Nick Cherry will be racing against each other the Solitaire du Figaro, the prestigious annual one-design Figaro race starts with the prologue on the of June 16 for the 34 solo skippers. The first leg of the race starts on the June 24 from Paimpol (FRA) to Gijon (ESP).