Race 3 - Day 19
Crew Diary - Race 3 Day 19: Cape Town to Fremantle
19 November

Jakes Jakobsen

In Africa there is a saying in Afrikaans: "Moenie met die leeu se stert speel nie." Well actually it's a bit more gutter than that, but the rough family friendly version is: "don't play with the lions tail." My ears are still ringing from those mocking days when we were stuck in repeated wind holes in the beautiful Southern Ocean saying: “Come to the Southern Ocean, they said."

Well the lion bared its teeth over the last 36 hours in a spectacular way that made us all realize why this is one of the most formidable stretches of ocean on our blue planet. Time flies on a Clipper 70 but my last recollection of the chain of events started off on an absolute high, flying the spinnaker probably for 3 days straight day and night before the ocean started boiling and we couldn't maintain a stable platform to keep our high pace up. Impatiently we waited for the next opportunity and eventually in not perfect conditions we hoisted the Code 2, which shortly thereafter wrapped. Qingdao is not a boat that is deterred by adversity so we hoisted the Code 3 as the conditions strengthened. Boom, second wrap 30 minutes later and a nightmare drop to wrestle the beast back in. For the ill-informed, these sails are roughly 330m2 in size and when they are filled with wind they are definitely more than a hand full.

We now had a yacht filled to the brim below with damaged spinnakers. The sail repair elves started working and the rest of the watch that was diminished by the lack of spinnaker elves carried on keeping Qingdao as quick as possible. Bernd and Andy slaved through the night and by morning we had code sails ready to roll. The weather however started to deteriorate rapidly as the forecast low pressure system moved in and the wind started to strengthen. It's a strange thing when you race inshore on smaller 40ft yachts you never really compete in winds over 25knots. In the Southern Ocean, entry level sailing is 20knots, so when the wind is consistently sitting at 30knots, it's situation normal. Unfortunately due to safety precautions we had to limit our foresail size so being within the window of allowable wind is tricky.

And then the lion arrived – a mighty pissed lion at that. Our first squall hit us at about 19h30 and the speed and voracity it arrived with caught us off guard. Skipper Chris was at the helm and I don't think anyone else onboard would have been able to helm under those conditions. Wind speeds just short of 50knots were spinning the readouts on the helm station like a national lottery system. It was like a dam burst and everything was just a chaotic mist of flying ocean. This was just the wake up call from the lion because the squalls carried on rolling in one after the other through the night. I was helming at one stage in the midnight watch and recall seeing 18knots boat speed on the dials. Definitely the pinnacle of my yacht driving experiences.

And then the lion took a rest, but not without casualties. This morning we were informed of an accident on GREAT Britain. Our thoughts and prayers go out to the skipper, fellow crew, family and friends. The Southern Ocean is a formidable beast and a stark reminder that the human race does not triumph over nature. We are all privileged to be out here and certainly from my perspective I have a brand new respect for this vast remote stretch of water.