The History of the Clipper Race - Race News

The History of the Clipper Race

18 July 2007

Sir Robin, the first man ever to sail solo non-stop around the world, wanted everyone, regardless of their background or level of sailing knowledge, to be able to experience the highs and lows and breathtaking exhilaration of ocean racing.

In 1995, with barely a year to go before the start of the first Clipper Race, the small team gathered by Sir Robin started planning with a vengeance, the fleet of eight 60-foot yachts commissioned and the crew recruited. The yachts, the last of which was delivered just two weeks before the race began, were named after the original tea clippers who ruled the waves 150 years ago, racing to deliver their cargo from China to the fashionable, tea-drinking sets in London. In the Great Tea Race of 1866 Ariel was first over the finish line, completing the 15,000-mile race from the Chinese port of Foo-Chow-Foo to London in just 90 days. More than a century later her namesake was the first to lift the Clipper Trophy after winning the Clipper 96 Race.

The routes for the first four Clipper races were similar but each had its own variations.

Clipper 96 started in Plymouth and then went on to Madeira, Fort Lauderdale, Panama, Galapagos, Hawaii, Yokahama, Shanghai, Hong Kong, Singapore, Seychelles, Durban, Cape Town, Salvador (Brazil), the Azores and back to Plymouth.

It had always been the intention to visit Cuba but this proved to awkward with a stop in the USA first, so to get over this, the Clipper 98 Round the World Yacht Race called briefly at Nassau in the Bahamas and then went onto Marina Hemingway, just to the west of Havana. The rest of the course didn’t alter.

After the Clipper 98 Race it was decided to include New York and so this was substituted for the Azores. This added a fair distance to the race and so the fleet stopped in Mauritius instead of the Seychelles. More saving was made by having Cape Town as the only South African port (although Durban made a welcome return to the route in Clipper 05-06 and we are looking forward to visiting South Africa’s playground again during the Clipper 07-08).

The big change for the Clipper 2000 Race was that the boats were renamed and called after cities. The Times newspaper came on board as the title sponsor and used the race as its main millennium project, rebranding it as The Times Clipper 2000. Portsmouth became the start and finish port and Jersey was inserted as the penultimate stopover so that the finish could be better orchestrated to happen at a stated time – impossible to do breaking out of the Azores High.

In March 2001 the fleet was hit by a bad storm after leaving Tokyo Bay and several boats carried away the headboards on their mainsails as well as suffering other problems and so they were all brought back to Yokohama. When they set out for the second time they bypassed Shanghai and stopped at Okinawa on their way to Hong Kong.

After leaving Singapore there was an unscheduled change due to problems with Bristol’s generator and, while en route to Mauritius, the whole fleet made an unscheduled pit stop at Christmas Island in the Indian Ocean. After Salvador the yachts departed from their previous route and set off across the Equator heading for New York. Everyone expected the classic race across the Atlantic to The Lizard in Cornwall and then on to Jersey to be a fast downhill dash. At the crew briefing Sir Robin warned everyone how he had been becalmed in September south of Greenland in a multihull. His warning was to ring true as the Clipper fleet subsequently stopped dead and then made an uncharacteristically slow transatlantic crossing with his words ringing in their ears.

There was a new home port for the Clipper 2002 Race as it started and finished in Liverpool, an enormously significant change as it has proved to be the foundation stone on which future arrangements between Clipper and the city of Liverpool developed.

No-one taking part in the race will forget the start day on 27 October 2002. For 48 hours the race team had been tracking the deepest of depressions into the south west approaches and then up the Irish Sea. Early on race day the Coastguard at Holyhead recorded wind speeds in excess of 100mph, while in Liverpool the enclosed waters of Albert Dock looked like a boiling cauldron as the storm hit. Display stands took off and banners went flying. Instead of pictures of boats sailing in front of the famous Liverpool waterfront, TV cameras focussed on people being blown down the docks and others clutching the railings. Much to the relief of everyone, the start was delayed 24 hours but, despite the next day being a Monday, some 40,000 spectators still came down to see the delayed start.

Shanghai once again proved to be a stumbling block in March 2003 as the promised berthing did not materialise and so the fleet raced direct from Yokahama to Hong Kong, where their arrival was due to coincide with the Rolling Stones concert and the Rugby 7s. Things did not work out exactly as the dreaded SARS virus also arrived in Hong Kong at this time. The first casualty was the Stones who did not Roll, although the Rugby 7s did continue. It was a great relief when the race fleet managed to break clear and finally reach the Indonesian island of Batam, eight miles south of Singapore. The marina was chosen as an alternative to locations in Singapore because of the continued concern over SARS. Ironically it proved to be one of the most successful stops and a major factor in Singapore’s decision to take a leading role in the Clipper 05-06 and Clipper 07-08 Races.

Having run four successful races based on much the same route the formula was changed for the Clipper 05-06 Race. The nature of the Clipper Races is to provide the best possible racing, which inevitably means a high degree of downwind sailing. Apart from being the most exciting point of sailing, boats that sail well downwind get their due desserts and often pull out a small lead which can turn into a much bigger one. Most importantly sailing down wind relies on the skill of many more crew members than just the helmsman and this in turn generates a strong sense of purpose and fulfilment within the whole team.

Not surprisingly the race picks up many of the old trading routes and is therefore a close link to the old tea and spice clippers racing out and back to the Orient. It has always been the intention to strengthen the race’s connection with Asia, hence the North Pacific crossing and a transit though the Panama Canal. The final piece of the jigsaw was to fit in racing in the Southern Ocean and a visit to Australasia, which has been achieved by the leg from Durban in South Africa to Fremantle in Western Australia.

There are several planning windows on the weather front, the main ones being the timings connected with the various hurricane or tropical storm seasons. Hurricanes are not like grouse and do not have set dates when the season starts; it is all to do with probabilities and percentages. The main planning window is to be well clear of the Caribbean by July, if not earlier. This actually determines the start date and means setting off in the autumn from northern Europe which fits in neatly with a southern hemisphere summer in the Southern Ocean. Time waits for no-one and to achieve a prudent exit from the Caribbean the sweep through China and Japan is, if you are an optimist, in their ‘early spring’.

The Dubois-designed Clipper 68s are naturally a quantum leap ahead on the Clipper 60s but it is worth looking at the progressive changes in the original boats since the first Clipper Race in 1996. One of these is the advance over the last nine years in electronics. In the Clipper 96 Race each yacht carried 240 paper charts and a large bookcase of marine publications. In 1998 the UK Hydrographic Office became an official race supplier and the boats sailed with ARCS electronic charts. Over the next three races these moved from being a novelty to becoming the norm and are now taken for granted in the same way as word processors have replaced typewriters. The number of paper charts has been reduced by two-thirds and their main uses tend to be for back up and training. Volumes of tides tables and lists of lights have been replaced by a couple of CDs and other boat reference manuals and the hull drawings are now held in digital format.

The communications on board have also been revolutionised over this period. In the Clipper 96 Race all communications took place using Inmarsat C where every key stroke had a cost associated with it. Quickly everyone developed abbreviations much the same as are now used in Txt msgng. Emails sent via satellite are now practical and not too expensive and these have made a tremendous difference, especially as each crew member has a network where the messages get forwarded on, often to several hundred people. Satellite telephone calls can be made from the boats to numbers ashore with ease but one principle that stands firm is that nobody, other than the Race Office, can telephone into the yachts. As you struggle on the foredeck, in the middle of the night, recovering a flailing spinnaker in a squall, you are probably not receptive to the fact that your dog has eaten your neighbour’s cat - some things are just better sent by email.

The effect of these improved communications has brought the race very much closer to all the supporters and followers. The yachts in Clipper 07-08 are equipped with state of the art equipment to enable them to send back high-resolution images, store and forward video footage as well as allow the skippers to take part in telephone conference calls with high quality audio. The 6-hourly position reports on the web are now supported by articles and explanations written by a wide selection of crew and race staff and this has made the race grow into an all absorbing spectator sport. With no website for the Clipper 96 Race, followers could only get progress reports by using a fax-back system to the office when they would get half a side of inspired prose from the wonderful Rosie. What a development from 36 years ago when Sir Robin sailed Suhaili around the world in 312 days with no contact for eight months!

Foul weather clothing, still affectionately referred to as oilskins or ‘oilies’, is a major factor in the success of the race and an area which has seen great progress. Because these have to be used in all climates, including the tropics, it is not an option to dress crews up as though they are about to set off in a winter wartime convoy to Murmansk. They have to be reasonably lightweight and also durable enough to have about 12 months continued wear, far in excess of what such clothing is normally called on to do.

Despite initial optimism from a variety of manufacturers, the foul weather clothing supplied for the early races routinely failed to remain effective for the whole race. A significant advance was made for Clipper 2002 when Henri Lloyd became involved as one of the official suppliers and they were able to develop and modify the clothing according to the race’s special requirements.

Two areas that have changed very little are the principles on which the training is based and the formula for mixing each crew with a proportion of round the worlders and leggers.

Having the training split into three separate parts has stood the test of time. Apart from the logical progression on the skill side, mixing the individuals on a random basis in the initial training has always paid dividends as it generates a fleet-wide camaraderie that becomes so important during the race.

The formula for the composition of the crews, with between a third and a half being round the worlders and the others a mixture of people doing one or more legs, has also proved itself. The value of new blood joining a boat can be an enormous tonic in a marathon race like Clipper and far outweighs the short-term disadvantages of any disruption of these changes.

The major development on the crew side is the change from running a national event into an international one. Up until Clipper 05-06 the international crew members had been a minority of enthusiasts who had heard about the race in variety of random ways and had the determination to sign up. Now, with dedicated recruitment campaigns around the world, the number of international crew members is growing from race to race.

On 12 October 2006 the Clipper Race celebrated the tenth anniversary of the start of the first race. The sixth one, Clipper 07-08, will start from Liverpool on 16 September 2007 and finish there in July 2008. What a difference from the eight white boats slipping out of Plymouth’s Mayflower Marina with a handful of spectators to see them on their way. It is a world away from the ten-strong fleet of Clipper 68s about to embark on their second circumnavigation representing a host of international cities. The crowds lining the Albert Dock in Liverpool and those who will turn out to greet the fleet in the other stopover ports will be in their tens of thousands; and around the world more than 200 million people will follow the Clipper 07-08 Race.

What has not changed is that the race still remains very true to its fundamental principle in that that it is a race for those who take part in it. Ordinary people doing something truly extraordinary.