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Picture Gallery, please respect copyright
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Part One After a pretty good start from Night fell, the others were by now well outside us. The next obligatory waypoint was surely closer to us than any of the others. Spirits were high. The lack of generator, and thus our water maker; the inability to shower; one of the loos out of order; and all the sailing aide instruments in the cockpit not working, were irrelevant. Winning is everything! No more fourth’s or fifth’s for us. So on and on we went, curving round the banana towards
the Western end of And then disaster struck. A ferocious squall from nowhere. Oh we saw it coming but no time for preventitive action to be completed. All hands on deck to handle the raising of the jib behind the spinnaker to take the weight off it. A temperature drop of ten degrees, a banshee’s howl of wind, and horizontal rain shining in the deck lights. We start to yaw, left, right, left right then quite suddenly LEFT, RIGHT, and we are over, flat on the water. A gunshot! The downhaul on the spinnaker pole parts, and the pole is broken, bent like some giant coctail stick. The spinnaker rips into shreds, most of it seems to be under the water. We come up smoothly from the broach, but then immediately we are flat again the other side, the deck a wall beside us, hanging on for our lives, grateful for the safety training, the knowledge our harnesses are on, and the yacht is safe. Never frightened, one is too busy for that, but aware of the moment, life at the edge! Like the Wall at Avoriaz, known to so many skiers, and where I fell from top to bottom - far more terrifying. For then I was quite out of control. Nick, our Skipper, keeps us busy, it’s “hang on”, then we heave to. The Clippers have this extraordinary ability to stop in the strongest of winds. Peace aboard while the storm rages round us. We count those aboard. All thirteen safe and well. The scream of the wind abates. Where are all the crew? One was right in the pulpit at the bow. He has been completely submerged. I was hoisting the jib with another. We are left hanging from the halliard. One is partly pushed through the safety rails. Everyone has a different story. Below there has also been rain. Potatoes, oranges, onions, and fruit! But what of the race?
We have been driven South towards the beaches of Come on Taeping!. We can catch them yet!. Part Two Communication from Taeping Friday, 11 December Taeping is back! It’s a few days later in the annals of
Taeping and her crew on this leg from The night before last we knew Chrysolite was close to us, having been only some 2 miles away at the previous 0500 GMT position report. We woke up to a fine & beautiful morning to find our prey on the starboard bow, & converging on the way-point with us. The way-point was put in to keep us clear of a nasty shoal on which sits a large rusting freighter. “It looks just like a ship”, said I. “That’s because it is, you twit Percy” (Percy is my alter ego). My watch members are merciless in their scorn. No respect at all. Anyway on with the story. We follow Chrysolite round the way-point by about 200 yards, and begin to bear away onto the new course. Heavy storm clouds were up wind, and readers of earlier tales of Taeping’s woes will have heard of the loss of our All Purpose (AP) spinnaker, so we are understandably wary. But we did have the asymmetric spinnaker and the lightweight left. With both yachts looking hard at the weather, we think the clouds are breaking up and decide to go for it. The asymmetric suited the conditions, and we had it up quickly. More quickly than Chrysolite could get their AP up, and we take them!! Cameras clicked on each boat. Less than 100 yards after six hundred miles. Friendly waves, and angry fists exchanged! We pull ahead by 200 yards - a bit of a surprise as the AP is the better for the lighter winds but they were for some reason slower. The wind veered again, which meant we were on a broad reach and their AP was enabled them to pull away. The wind-shift continued, both spinnakers came down, with us ahead by some 100 yards or so. Haakon, our Nordic representative, and leader of the watch on duty at the time was delighted, and with good reason. His team had done a great job. The time arrives for a watch change. This writer, leader of the subsequent watch, and determined to follow this example of exemplary seamanship, exercised his prerogative of demanding the helm, and took over with confidence. Within half an hour Chrysolite was closer, and disaster for me again, albeit of a different type. A bikini clad crew member appeared on deck, with a hoary bearded suitor of the moment in tow. (No guesses please, 90% of the guys seen to have beards aboard!), The couple proceed to cavort around me demanding salt water showers. The lady received her shower, and I too was soaked in the process. A happy man? No, I was not. And yes you’ve guessed, Chrysolite passed us. Just steamed by with less than 100 yards between us. My team were browned off. More with me than Chrysolite I think, but at least they showed their displeasure in that most unsubtle English manner and displayed moonies in our foe’s direction! Why did they pass us? Whatever they were doing was more right than what we were doing. Sail trimming is everything. But ocean racing is not about ten minutes when there’s over 250 miles to go. We didn’t give up on that fateful night last Saturday, and we didn’t yesterday. With my crew still on watch our paths diverge. They are now on our starboard beam some ½ mile or so away. The watch changes again. Tim’s crew take over determined to gain the advantage. The hour progresses. The wind drops. We are trimming, trimming, trimming. Their sails seem to be flapping. Are they asleep, or in a wind hole. We pull ahead again! We are untouchable! Dark falls with them 2 miles astern. The 0500 GMT report them three miles behind. n And there’s more good news. We have caught up dramatically on the rest of the fleet in the past twelve hours. 18 miles up on Serica, and Mermerus is now only 9 miles away. My night crew comes on, and we can see Chrysolite behind,
and there’s a light far out to starboard.
In the morning when we come on we are delighted.
Not only have we continued to keep Chrysolite off, but we have both
Mermerus & Serica in sight and catchable! 4 Clippers, together after nearly
1,000 miles. A hasty breakfast, and
a cockpit meeting. Nick tells us we
have to go for it. No prisoners! We’ll
put all the sails up on the windward side of the yacht, and everyone not
otherwise engaged will lie down up there too.
It’s sleep up there tonight, and why not conditions are calm, and the
weather is beautiful! And the Nick
decides to go for the big one. We are fed up carrying all this excess water
which has been compulsory since our water maker also packed when the generator
went out at Anyway, that’s all for the moment in this little tale
of thirteen aboard a Clipper yacht. As
I finish, Chrysolite is 1 ½ miles off our starboard stern, and seems to be
catching us even though we should be faster with our genoa than their No1 jib
& staysail. Mermerus and Serica are three miles off our starboard beam.
It will be dark in fifteen minutes. Anything
can happen at any time in yacht racing. We
are 150 miles away from the finish, and the wind has dropped considerably.
The GPS (Global Positioning System) gives an estimated time of arrival at
the finish line of around 30 hours from now.
But that’s at a speed of 5 knots. Hopefully
the wind will pick up, and we’ll be in Keep watching this space. The prose may not be the best, but I hope it gives a flavour of the moment. And as I sign off, there is a great squall coming in again off our port beam. We may have to take the genoa down and switch back. Anyway I have to get back on deck. Bif’n, James & Percy Part Three E-Mail to Colin de Mowbray, Clipper Ventures Herewith Taeping’s report. Hope you enjoy it. And cheaper for you than by sattelite I think! Communication from Taeping - I shall do my best to describe the finish of the race
from You will remember I said Chrysolite seemed to be passing
us as darkness was falling. Pass us
they did. We couldn’t understand
why. We still don’t know why.
Skippers differ in their view, but let’s just say that some just
don’t bother with the genoa on the Clippers at all. We were furious,
despondent, and thoroughly miserable. We
did change the sails, but we were by then well passed, and the gap increased all
night. Watches changed, faces grew
longer, and when I got up early at 0500 Chrysolite was around six miles ahead.
None of the others were in our radar range.
Haakon’s watch was on duty until mine took over at 0600.
The wind seemed to have changed. Stephen
got up early too, and we all discussed the situation.
Could we get the asymmetric spinnaker up?
Why not? We were so far
behind now, with less then 90 miles to go. Doing
something seemed the better option. We woke Nick, and when my watch came up, we
went for it. One thing I can tell
you, the Taeping crew changes sails as fast as any professional racing yacht.
We know what we’re doing, and we do it well.
Each of us is better at some things than others, and without taking the
fun jobs away from anyone, when conditions require, it’s common sense to put
the right people on the right jobs. The
day stretched out. Within a few
hours we could see Chrysolite easily, another few hours and we could see three
of them! We were catching them!
The winds were crazy. Dead
calm, then suddenly we were doing 7 knots. We
put the lightweight spinnaker’s sheets on the asymmetric, when winds were
light, and switched them back when it got stronger.
The pole was being moved backwards and forwards all the time; trimming
was incessant. By 1500, when my
watch came on again we were 50 miles to go.
We were hungry and angry. Kevin
took the helm for us ,and I asked Stephen to go up to the shrouds where he could
see the assymetric’s trim which he called to me as I tailed the sheet and Perhaps it’s a team thing, but I can only look back on those three hours of my watch and promise anyone that they were the three most exciting hours of my sailing experience - apart from the final 20 minutes of the race of which more later! We just ate up the miles! When we went off at 1800 we had passed the three in sight, and could see two ahead! It was superb, and a huge boost to our previously lagging morale. Tim’s crew came on, and followed our method. The winds were getting up, and we saw a squall on the radar. Readers of previous editions of these stories will know of our concern about squalls! Skipper Nick called for all hands on deck, and we prepared to switch back to “white sails”. Then the wind seemed to steady, and notwithstanding our concerns we decided to risk it. The squall came, and it was pretty tough, hairy in fact, but manageable. The winds came, the winds went, and then they began to subside. It was all hands on deck a few minutes later for something we had not done before, a spinnaker “peel”, switching the assymetric for the much larger lightweight spinnaker. This sounds more complicated than it actually is. Basically one spinnaker goes up inside the one which is already up, the outer or forward spinnaker is then dropped. We took our time with Nick ensuring everyone knew exactly what their jobs were, and it worked perfectly. We were without a spinnaker for less than one minute, and then we really began to motor! We watched other boats changing sails, and knew then it was going to be an exciting finish. I mentioned specialties.
I like to think that mine is navigation, except for helming of course
where we all like to think we are pretty good!
My navigation skills were honed from the rather rudimentary thanks to my
friends John and Sheila Marsh, with whom I sailed last summer.
I readily agreed to keep us on track down to the finish line, which was a
one half mile wide line East of a particular buouy outside the entrance to the
harbour at As I have said, we knew well we were outside the line, and the call from Chrysolite, Serica, and Ariel submitting protests was hardly a surprise. We hadn’t finished, and of course they had. We know the rules, and we bear no grudge. Nick decided to go back up to the line and come through it within the boundaries. Hence our fourth position. Of course it’s a shame that the situation developed as it did, but I’d never want to switch the experience I enjoyed in those final moments with those who were on one of the three boats that crossed the official line before us. No way. No way at all. Ever. As I tap away in the night moored at the Yacht Club in Cristobal, the six other Clippers have already left for the canal transit to the Pacific. We have our new generator installed and working. We can’t test the water maker until we reach the clear waters on the other side, but there’s no reason it shouldn’t work. The loo is fixed. Most of the electrics are now working thanks to Cliff and his unwilling assistant Percy. The pole is fixed, albeit still bent slightly at one end. Watch out Clippers 2 to 7 you have Number One to contend with! Bif’n, James & Percy |
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