Crew Blog

The first 24 hours of Race 9

25 April 2008

Our first 24 hours of racing have been very exciting; after coming around the mark in last place we could clearly see nine lights behind us by midnight.  The other Clipper boats chose to go inland and we’re waiting to see our position as they gybe back out.  Needless to say we’re keen to get to the top!

Conditions have been pretty tricky so we weren’t able to gently ease ourselves back into ocean racing.  When we had the spinnaker up last night the wind versus wave directions were so different that the drivers only had 10 degrees of “wiggle room” to work with.  (NB we normally have about 40 degrees to play around with before there’s a risk of something going really wrong).  For our top drivers helming took intense concentration throughout the night in order to ensure the spinnaker didn’t collapse/wrap and we didn’t gybe or broach. But with such a small margin of error it made for an interesting night.

My definition of a broach is when we heel so far over that instead of lying on my bunk I’m lying on the side of the boat with my face in my storage locker.  This definition is currently being contested and countered with “nothing broke so we didn’t actually broach”.

We’ve come out guns blazing and we’re pushing the boat hard to get a podium position so the broaches (or near broaches) are no surprise to us. Safety is always paramount and the boat always remains under control, just sometimes there’s a little more effort amongst the skipper and crew to keep it that way!

Nina & Dan