The Hatch

Who to back in Clipper 07-08?

23 September 2007

The first leg of a Clipper Race is always a settling in period, but we watch with interest to look for trends. People asked before the start who I thought would win this race and I had to say, in all honesty, I had no idea.  Usually I have a suspicion, but not this time as all the training races produced different results. Hull & Humber came through with flying colours, having taken the lead by the time the fleet reached the English Channel, and she extended her lead. This was a good performance from her, but still does not tell us who will win overall as crews are still settling in and learning. The skipper can not be awake all the time, the watch leaders and watches are going to have to do the bulk of the sail trimming themselves, so the crew that learns how to do this effectively soonest will start to show. In a race where all the boats are so equal the performance is down to the crews and this is the way it should be in a race. What crews will discover is that the focus and concentration cannot be left until the last few days of a race when boats tend to close up as they head for the finish line, any time lost earlier is time lost forever.

The shake down leg is over. The crews are now off on the longest voyage any of them have made so far. The beat across the infamous Bay of Biscay, then, hopefully they pick up the Nortada, the northerly wind that blows southward down the Portuguese coast and leads them into the North-East Trade winds.  Then the frustrations and challenges of the Inter Tropical Convergence Zone (ITCZ) , better known as the Doldrums, where sometime you fight hard for just a few feet of progress, and finally into the South-East Trades of the South Atlantic, and a sprint for the finish in Salvador.

This is a challenging leg, with every type of weather to be expected. Picking the right place to be is as important as trimming the sails properly and it is going to be fascinating to watch how the race develops.