Crew Blog

Hard work and a bit of bad luck

01 June 2008

Once again on Jamaica we are cleaning…

We’ve scrubbed the floor boards out on deck, cleaned the heads, emptied all cupboards in the galley and attacked the dirt. We’ve pumped the bilges then scrubbed them too, waded through kit in the sleeping area and drowned any germs in anti-bac. The saloon lockers have been dried, cleaned and food stores re-bagged and recorded on the inventory. Who’s to say life on the open sea isn’t all glamour?!

And we worked hard getting here too. All the way from Jamaica we were up there at the front of the fleet. We had the excitement of catching Glasgow: Scotland with style Clipper, losing them, and catching them again. Then later we had a similar cat and mouse game with Liverpool 08. The light wind sailing was a real challenge, needing skilful sailing, teamwork and concentration, and the determination not to give up! We spent hours scouring the horizon watching what the other boats were doing. Who’d put up their spinnaker, who’d borne away. We had compass bearings on all yachts in sight: who was gaining on us, who was falling behind.

We’ve never sailed that long in such close quarters with the rest of the fleet. There was no waiting for the next six-hourly schedule to see if Liverpool 08 had overtaken, we could see them desperately trying to pass us to windward. They were so close we could hear their laughter. (We did sing ‘Happy Birthday’ to Duncan extra loudly hoping they could hear us too!) We held them off for a while, but they found wind before us later that night when we were stationary and slipped past us - into second place. Well done.

And at the very end when we were neck and neck in third or fourth place with about half the fleet, the spinnaker ripped across an old repair and we lost some ground. We would have loved to have finally made the podium, and it really felt like the best chance we’d had so far, so for us sixth place was disappointing. But we weren’t disappointed in how well we’d sailed together. We held our own in some difficult sailing with the rest of the fleet and we are pleased with that.

And after a couple of days of corporate events in New York, we’ll be doing it all over again. Still looking for that podium finish!