Sir Robin Knox-Johnston is the first man to sail solo, non-stop around the world
Sir Robin Knox-Johnston is the first man to sail solo, non-stop around the world. In April 2009 he celebrated the 40th anniversary of his return to Falmouth in Suhaili, 312 days after setting sail on a voyage no one else had ever accomplished.
In 2007 he completed his second solo circumnavigation as a competitor in the VELUX 5 OCEANS race. Sir Robin is the founder and Chairman of the Clipper Round the World Yacht Race and is an inspirational figurehead to those who undertake this challenge of a lifetime.
There is an old seaman’s adage that ‘The essence of good seamanship is safety’. This drives all our thinking at Clipper Ventures. No, we cannot guarantee absolute safety, but we can train people to have the thought of their own and their fellow crew members’ safety at the forefront of their minds throughout their voyage.
But safety is not just about clipping on your safety harness, keeping your weight low or watching that the action you take does not imperil anyone else. It is about keeping the boat cared for because, and here is another important adage, ‘If you look after the boat it will look after you’.
So an important part of the Clipper Race experience is helping our sailors to become good seamen and letting them learn how to look after their boats.At the heart of this is the avoidance of damage. This is the reasoning behind the penalty system for repairs to the boat. It provides a racing penalty when damage is caused on a simple scale, and also encourages crew to learn how to make repairs for themselves, something every good seaman should be able to do.
We do it on a simple formula, when the cost of repairs reaches £500, a point is deducted from the boat’s racing score, and the boat goes back to £0. Clearly if the damage is something that was not due to crew mistakes then the penalty does not apply. This can lead to some interesting discussions, because when a fitting breaks, say on the end of a spinnaker pole, the boat will claim it was not their fault, whereas we know that in general use that fitting is more than strong enough for its purpose and suspect that the damage was caused by a crash gybe, broach, or just the pole not being set up properly so an abnormal strain has been applied.
Sails are a particular issue. We supply one complete set of sails to each boat for the race and the crews are meant to keep these in good working order.If repairs are necessary they can do them themselves, and usually do, but sometimes the repair is beyond their abilities and has to go to a sail loft, thereby adding to the next £500 repair account.If a sail is so damaged that it cannot be economically or reasonably repaired then the boat can ask for a new replacement sail, but it would be unfair if this did not incur a penalty for two reasons.
The first is that the sail has not trashed itself; it has been trashed by the actions of the crew.The second is that we expect sails to wear and stretch evenly amongst the fleet. As sails stretch, they lose their initial shape which was the optimum for speed and, provided this happens evenly throughout the fleet, no boat is disadvantaged. But if a boat asks for a new sail, it is gaining an advantage over the other boats as that sail will be in a better shape and have fewer repairs.
To balance this there is a tariff, for example, four points for a new spinnaker.Any other system would be unfair to the other boats. After all, suppose one boat consistently held on to its spinnaker too long to gain a few extra miles and kept breaking it; why should it be given a new one when other boats have sailed more conservatively?
In 1994, Peter Blake and I took Enza New Zealand around the world to capture the Jules Verne Trophy in a time of 74 days 22 hours. We had sailed together before of course, in a Whitbread in 1977 and the Cape to Rio Race in 1971 and shared the same approach to long distance sailing: you don’t sail at 100 per cent. The reason is that a sudden squall, a large wave that causes a broach, or an unplanned gybe, will put the pressure on the mast, rigging and sails well above 100 per cent and that is when things get broken.
To win a race, or break a record, first you have to finish.It all comes down to basic seamanship.