Two years from now …….. I should be starting the final race of the final leg of the 2019-2020 Clipper Round The World Yacht Race ……… as the final race of the final leg of the 2017-2018 edition of the race got underway from Derry-Londonderry yesterday.

Since leaving Liverpool almost a year ago, the surviving eleven Clipper yachts (Greenings was wrecked off the coast of South Africa at the beginning of Leg 3 last year) have battled each other in 12 races over 8 legs and experienced everything from wind holes with no wind to hurricane force winds and phenomenal sea states, extreme heat and freezing conditions, and boats speeds up to 35 knots. The race has included stopovers in Punta del Este, Uruguay; Cape Town, South Africa; Fremantle, Sydney, Hobart and the Whitsundays in Australia; Sanya and Qingdao in China; Seattle, USA; Panama; New York, USA; and most recently Derry-Londonderry, Northern Ireland.

This final race will run anti-clockwise around Ireland, to the 28th July finish line in Liverpool Bay with 12 points available to the first yacht across the line. However Clipper 2017-2018 won’t quite be over by then as the entire circumnavigation then concludes with a Le Mans start and a 20 mile sprint up the River Mersey to a finish line off the Royal Albert Dock, in which the top three teams will be awarded 3, 2 and 1 points respectively.

Sanya Serenity Coast, skippered by Australian Wendy Tuck started the final race at the top of the overall race leaderboard with 137 points. Visit Seattle and Qingdao, skippered by Britain Nikki Henderson and German Chris Kobusch respectively, are joint second with 123 points. Significantly, Visit Seattle are playing their Joker Card on this very last race which means their final race points will be doubled.  Amongst the rest of the fleet there is still plenty of competition for final places. PSP Logistics and Garmin are both tied in fourth place, 11 points behind Qingdao. Dare to Lead is sixth, 2 points ahead of Unicef in seventh, who is 12 points ahead of Great Britain in eighth. At the bottom of the fleet Hotelplanner.com in tenth will be looking to advance on Liverpool 2018, just 2 points ahead, while also keeping a close eye on Nasdaq, 6 points behind them. Wendy Tuck and Nikki Henderson are competing to be the first ever female winning skipper in the event’s 22 year history, indeed a female skipper has never before won a round the world yacht race.

Right now, as the fleet rounds the NW tip of Ireland its Qingdao leading Liverpool 2018 ahead of Unicef, PSP Logistics, Visit Seattle, Sanya Serenity Coast, Dare to Lead, Garmin, Great Britain, Hotelplanner.com and Nasdaq in that order with less than 3 miles between the top five and less than 14 miles between first and eleventh. They have about 960 miles left to race.

 

The current Race Viewer, updated hourly, the Leaderboard details and the Skipper’s blogs, team pages and crew diaries are all available via the dropdown menu on the Clipper website at http://www.clipperroundtheworld.com  …………………. this time in 2 years!!!

 

 

Captain Pugwash is a fictional pirate in a series of British children’s comic strips and books created by John Ryan which were subsequently adapted into a TV series using cardboard cut-outs filmed in live-action! The first series was broadcast live on the BBC in 1957. A later colour series was shown in 1974-75 and a traditional animated series, The Adventures of Captain Pugwash, first aired in 1998. Horatio Pugwash sails the high seas in a ship called the Black Pig, ably assisted by cabin boy Tom, pirates Willy and Barnabas, and Master Mate – not a typo! John Ryan successfully won retractions and settlements from the Sunday Correspondent and the Guardian after both newspapers claimed that the show’s characters had rude names and that the BBC had taken it off air as a result. His mortal enemy is Cut-Throat Jake, captain of the Flying Dutchman.

Sir Francis Drake (c.1540 – 28 Jan 1596) was the eldest of twelve sons, an English sea captain, privateer, slave trader, naval officer and explorer, one time Mayor of Plymouth and a Member of Parliament. He carried out the second circumnavigation of the world in a single expedition from 1577 to 1580 and became the first leader of such an expedition to survive the entire trip. With his voyage into the Pacific he claimed what is now California for the English and inaugurated an era of conflict with the Spanish who, at one time, offered 20,000 ducats (about £6 million) for his capture or death. He was knighted by Queen Elizabeth I on board his ship, the Golden Hind, on his return. Elizabeth ordered the details of his circumnavigation to be regarded as State Secrets. Drake was second-in-command of the English Fleet in the battle against the Spanish Armada in 1588. He died of dysentery in January 1596 after unsuccessfully attacking San Juan, Puerto Rico.  He was buried at sea off Portobelo, Panama and his body has never been recovered. His statue stands on Plymouth Hoe overlooking Drake’s Island.

Sir Robin Knox-Johnston (born 17 March 1939). Robin Knox-Johnston was born in Putney in London and between 1957 and 1965 he served in the Merchant Navy and the Royal Naval Reserve. On 14 June 1968 he left Falmouth in his 32 foot yacht Suhaili as part of the Sunday Times Golden Globe Race. Despite losing his steering gear off Australia, he rounded Cape Horn on 17 January 1969, 20 days before his closest competitor, who was to subsequently abandon the race. The other seven competitors dropped out at various stages, leaving Knox-Johnston to win the race and become officially the first person to circumnavigate the globe non-stop and single handed on 22 April 1969, the day he returned to Falmouth. Knox-Johnston donated his £5,000 prize money to the family of Donald Crowhurst who disappeared at sea after attempting to fake his participation in the race and whose story is told in the 2018 movie The Mercy with Colin Firth playing Crowhurst. In 2007, Knox-Johnston became, at 67, the oldest yachtsman to complete a round the world solo voyage. In 1996 he established the first Clipper Round The World Yacht Race and has since worked with the Clipper Ventures company as Chairman.

Captain Birdseye also know in other European countries as Captain Iglo, is the advertising mascot for  the Birds Eye frozen food brand founded by Clarence Birdseye (1886-1956) an American inventor, entrepreneur and naturalist. Captain Birdseye appeared in numerous television and billboard commercials, normally for Fish Fingers, and is generally depicted as a clean living, older sailor with a white beard, dressed in merchant naval uniform and with a seafaring accent! The actor most associated with Captain Birdseye was John Hewer (1922-2008) a Lowestoft man who played the character from 1967 to 1998. His tenure was interrupted in 1971 when the Captain was “killed off” by Birds Eye with an “obituary” published in The Times which read:  “Birdseye, Captain. On June 7th 1971, after long exposure, his life just slipped through his fingers. Celebrity and gourmet. In recognition of his selfless devotion to the nutritional needs of the nation’s children.” Birds Eye resurrected the character 3 years later. In 1993 Captain Birdseye was named in a poll as the most recognizable captain on the planet after Captain Cook (no beard)!

Vasco da Gama (c.1460s – 24 Dec 1524) was a Portuguese explorer and the first European to reach India by sea. His initial voyage to India (1497-1499) was the first to link Europe and Asia by an ocean route connecting the Atlantic and the Indian Oceans (a sort of Clipper Leg 3!) and therefore the West and the Orient. On 8 July 1497 da Gama led a fleet of four ships with a crew of 170 men from Lisbon. They landed at Kappadu in the present day Indian state of Kerala and the first seaborne western trade to India is recorded as four cloaks of scarlet cloth, six hats, four branches of corals, twelve almasares (a veil with fringes used to decorate altars), a box with seven brass vessels, a chest of sugar, two barrels of oil and a cask of honey.  The fleet left India on 29 August 1498 and, ignoring local advice about the impending monsoon wind patterns, had a harrowing return journey. Vasco da Gama’s ships had crossed the Indian Ocean in only 23 days on the outward journey. Now with the monsoon winds against them the return crossing took 132 days. Two ships and 55 men were to return to Portugal bringing with them a cargo that was worth sixty times the cost of the expedition. He went on to lead a second expedition (the Fourth Indian Armada) in 1502 with a fleet of 15 ships joined in the Indian Ocean by another five ships led by his cousin. This 4th Armada was something of a da Gama family affair with ships commanded by two of his maternal uncles, and two of his brothers-in-law. da Gama returned to India for the final time in 1524 having been granted by King John III the privileged title of “Viceroy” On arrival he immediately invoked his high viceregent powers to impose a new order in Portuguese India replacing all the old officials with his own appointments. But da Gama contracted malaria not long after arriving and died in Cochin on Christmas Eve 1524. His remains were returned to Portugal in 1539 and in 1880 were moved to a new carved tomb in the nave of the Monastery of the Hieronymites in Belem, the southwestern-most civil parish of the municipality of Lisbon, only a few metres away from the tombs of kings Manuel I and John III, whom da Gama had served.

Captain Edward John Smith (27 Jan 1850 – 15 Apr 1912) was born in Hanley, Stoke-on-Trent and first went to sea as an apprentice at the age of 13 with Gibson & Co in Liverpool. He joined the White Star line in 1880 and gained his first command in 1887. He went on to command the Republic, Coptic, Majestic, Baltic, Adriatic and Olympic. Smith served with distinction in the Boer War by commanding troopships to the Cape. After he became commodore of the White Star fleet in 1904 it became routine for Smith to command the Line’s newest ships on their maiden voyages. It was therefore no surprise that Smith was in command of the RMS Titanic, the largest passenger ship in service at the time, on her maiden voyage in April 1912. On April 10 1912 Captain Smith, wearing a bowler hat and a long overcoat took a taxi from his home and came onboard Titanic at 7.00am. The ship sailed at 12.00am and as she did, wash from her propellers caused the laid-up New York to break from her moorings and swing towards the Titanic. Quick action from Smith helped to avert a premature end to the departure from Southampton. On the night of April 14 Smith visited the bridge after dinner and before turning in, telling Second Officer Lightoller to alert him immediately if he was at all concerned. Visibility was good, the sea was flat calm, the temperature was dropping (near freezing) and ice had been reported. Six iceberg warning were received by the Titanic between 9.00am and 11.39pm on April 14 but only the first two were seen by Smith. Titanic was proceeding at 22 knots (her top speed was 24 knots).  Smith was awakened by the collision with the iceberg at about 11.40pm and rushed to the bridge. Shortly thereafter he completed an inspection of the ship with her designer, Mr Thomas Andrews, and ordered the lifeboats swung out. Surprisingly little is know of Smith’s actions in the last two hours of Titanic’s life. His legendary skills of leadership seem to have left him as the magnitude of the impending disaster took hold. Titanic sank 2 hours and 20 minutes after the iceberg collision. Over 1500 people were lost; 49% of the children onboard; 26% of the female passengers; 82% of the male passengers and 78% of the crew. Captain Smith was last seen in the bridge area. He appears to have made no effort to save himself. His body, if recovered, was never identified. In 1907, SS Kronprinz Wilhelm, a German liner had hit an iceberg and suffered a crushed bow but was still able to complete her voyage. That same year, Edward John Smith declared in an interview that he could not “imagine any condition which would cause a ship to founder. Modern shipping has gone beyond that.”

Amerigo Vespucci (9 Mar 1454 – 22 Feb 1512) was an Italian explorer, financier, navigator and cartographer born in the Republic of Florence in 1454. Vespucci first demonstrated in about 1502 that Brazil and the West Indies did not represent Asia’s eastern outskirts as initially conjectured by Christopher Columbus (1451-1506 no beard!), but instead constituted an entirely separate landmass hitherto unknown to people of the Old World. Colloquially referred to as the New World, this second super continent came to be known as America, deriving its name from Americus, the Latin version of Vespucci’s first name. At the invitation of King Manuel I of Portugal, Vespucci participated as an observer in several voyages that explored the east coast of South America between 1499 and 1502. On the first of these voyages he was onboard the ship that discovered that South America extended further south than had been previously thought. In 1508 the position of Chief of Navigation of Spain (Piloto Mayor de Indias) was created for Vespucci with the responsibility of planning navigation for voyages to the Indies. Much of Vespucci’s claim to fame is based on letters thought to have been written in the early 1500s reporting his travels, exploits and discoveries. There is much historical expert debate about their authenticity. The letters caused controversy after his death, especially among the supporters of Columbus who believed Columbus’ priority for the discovery of America was being undermined and this seriously damaged Vespucci’s reputation. Vespucci’s real historical importance may well rest in his letters, whether he wrote them or not, rather than the discoveries he claimed, for through the letters the European public learned about the continent of the Americas for the first time. Amerigo Vespucci died on 22 Feb 1512 at his home in Seville, Spain.

Captain Edward Teach (Blackbeard) (c1680 – 22 Nov 1718) Captain Edward Teach, better known as Blackbeard was an English pirate who operated around the West Indies and the eastern coast of Britain’s North American colonies. Little is known of his early life but he may have been a sailor on privateer ships during Queen Anne’s War (1702-1713) before settling on the Bahamian island of New Providence and joining the crew of Captain Benjamin Hornigold, and between them they engaged in numerous acts of piracy. Hornigold retired in 1717. Teach captured a French merchant vessel, renamed her Queen Anne’s Revenge, and equipped her with 40 guns. He became a renowned pirate. His nickname derived from his thick black beard and fearsome appearance; he was reported to have tied lit fuses (slow matches) under his hat and in his beard to frighten his enemies. He formed an alliance of pirates and blockaded the port of Charles Town, South Carolina, ransoming the port’s inhabitants. He eventually settled in Bath, North Carolina and accepted a Royal pardon but he was soon back at sea where he attracted the attention of Alexander Spotswood, the Governor of Virginia. Spotswood arranged for a party of soldiers and sailors under the command of Lieutenant Maynard of HMS Pearl, to capture Blackbeard and, in a ferocious battle on the inner side of Ocracoke Island, North Carolina on 22 Nov 1718, Teach and several of his crew were killed. Teach’s corpse was thrown into the inlet and his head was suspended from the bowsprit of Maynard’s sloop so that the reward for Blackbeard’s death could be collected. Various superstitious tales exist about Blackbeard’s ghost. Unexplained lights at sea are referred to as “Teach’s light” and some claim that Teach now roams the afterlife searching for his head, for fear that his friends, and the Devil will not recognise him. Edward Teach was a shrewd and calculating leader who actually spurned the use of force, relying instead on his fearsome image to elicit the response he desired from those from whom he robbed. Contrary to the modern-day picture of the traditional pirate, he commanded his vessels with the consent of his crews.

Leif Erikson (c.970 – c.1020) was a Norse explorer from Iceland. He was the first known European to have discovered continental North America (excluding Greenland) before Christopher Columbus. According to the Sagas of The Icelanders he established a Norse settlement  at Vinland, tentatively identified with the Norse L’Anse aux Meadows on the northern tip of Newfoundland in modern-day Canada. Later archaeological evidence suggests that Vinland may have been in the areas around the Gulf of St Lawrence and that the L’Anse aux Meadows site was a ship repair station. Leif was the son of Erik the Red, the founder of the first Norse settlement in Greenland in 986AD. Leif’s successful expedition to Vinland, sometime after 999AD, encouraged other Norsemen to also make the journey. The first apparent contact between Norsemen and indigenous people was made by his brother Thorvald. In the end there were no permanent Norse settlements in Vinland although sporadic voyages for forages, timber and trade possibly lasted for centuries. Leif was described as a wise, considerate and strong man of striking appearance. After his first trip to Vinland he returned to Greenland. He is last mentioned alive in 1019 and it is believed he died in Greenland the following year. Stories of Leif’s journey to North America had a profound effect on the identity and self-perception of later Nordic-Americans. The first statue of Leif was erected in Boston in 1887. A statue was erected in Chicago in 1901 and further statues were erected at the Minnesota State Capitol in St Paul in 1949, near Lake Superior in Duluth in 1956 and in downtown Seattle.

Long John Silver  is a fictional sailor and main antagonist in the novel Treasure Island (1883) by Robert Louis Stevenson (1850 – 1894). The most colourful and complex character in the book, Silver claimed to have served in the Royal Navy and had a pet parrot called Captain Flint, named after the notorious pirate of the same name under whom Silver had sailed as Quartermaster. He claimed he was the only man Flint (the pirate not the parrot) ever feared. Silver`s left leg is cut off just below the hip and he wields a crutch under his left arm with considerable dexterity. Like many of Stevenson`s characters there is more than a touch of duality about him; ostensibly Silver is a hardworking and likeable seaman, and it is only as the plot unfolds that his villainous nature is gradually revealed. Robert Newton (1905 – 1956) was the definitive feverish-eyed Long John Silver in the 1950 film adaptation of Treasure Island and the film became the standard for screen portrayals of historical pirates. Born in Dorset in the West Country of England and growing up in Cornwall near Land’s End, Newton’s exaggeration of his West Country accent is credited with popularising the stereotypical pirate voice. Newton has become the patron saint of the International Talk Like A Pirate Day (19 Sep).

Odysseus (also known by the Latin variant Ulysses) is a legendary Greek king of Ithaca and the hero of Homer`s epic poem the Odyssey. Son of Laertes, husband of Penelope and father of Telemachus, Odysseus is renowned for his intellectual brilliance, guile, and versatility, and is this known by the epithet Odysseus the Cunning Greek. He is most famous for his nostros or homecoming which took him an eventful 10 years after the decade long Trojan War. In one particular story from the Odyssey, Odysseus and his sailors are warned by the goddess Circe of The Sirens, monsters who pretend to be beautiful women whose amazingly beautiful voices lure passing sailors to their death. Circe warns Odysseus that the Sirens sit beside the ocean, combing their long golden hair and singing to passing sailors. But anyone who hears their song is bewitched by its sweetness, and they are drawn to that island like an iron to a magnet. And their ship smashes upon the rocks as sharp as spears. And these sailors join the many victims of the Sirens in a meadow filled with skeletons. Taking a large block of beeswax, a gift from Circe, Odysseus breaks it into small pieces and tells his men to soften it and put it in their ears so that they will not here the Sirens call. He himself wants to hear the call and survive so he orders his men to lash him to the mast. and leave him tied tightly no matter how much he may beg for release. Some post-Homeric authors state that the Sirens were fated to die if someone heard their singing and escaped them, and that after Odysseus passed by they flung themselves into the water and perished.

Robinson Crusoe is a novel by Daniel Defoe (1660 – 1731) first published in April 1719 and thought to be based on the life of Alexander Selkirk (1676 – 1721) a Scottish privateer and Royal Navy officer who spent four years and four months as a castaway (1704-1709) after being marooned by his captain on an uninhabited island in the South Pacific ocean – the island of Mas a Tierra which was renamed Robinson Crusoe Island in 1966. Selkirk survived the ordeal but succumbed to a tropical illness a dozen years later while serving in HMS Weymouth off West Africa. In the book, Crusoe, whose birth name is Robinson Kreutznaer, spends 28 years on a remote tropical dessert island near Trinidad, encountering cannibals, mutineers, and captives before ultimately being rescued. In 1964 a French film production crew made a 13-part serial The Adventures of Robinson Crusoe starring Robert Hoffmann. It was Austrian actor Hoffmann’s first professional acting role after leaving acting school in Paris in 1964. The black and white series was dubbed into English and German and the BBC broadcast it on numerous occasions, normally during school summer holidays, between 1965 and 1977. For at least three generations of English children this was the definitive version of Defoe`s classic novel and the somewhat haunting musical soundtrack became the signature tune of the school holidays. The serial was filmed on Gran Canaria, the third largest of the Canary Islands, with the scenes of Crusoe remembering his early life in York and Hull shot in Normandy. Filming took 4 months.

 

oh and to make up the Bakers Dozen of famous and infamous bearded sailors – this one – a ONCE (adjective: former; having been at one time. noun: a single occasion; one time only.) BEARDED SAILOR

 

Probably the most frequently asked question since I “came out” about Clipper back in May. The answer is really quite simple. It will look something like this:

 

Let’s be honest, it COULD be worse …..

 

Postscript:     I shaved my “experimental beard” off on a Saturday night. My Mother, who was staying with us at the time, noticed …………………. on the following Monday lunchtime!

 

………….. you know you are “hanging on too tight” after level 1 training when …………  you start practicing winch handle techniques while you’re winding the clock …………

 

…….. you know you are “hanging on too tight” after Level 1 training when………. you make inappropriate use of the heated towel rail ………

 

 

 

……. you know you are “hanging on too tight” after Level 1 training  when …………….. you start “oxo-ing” the bathroom blind cord on the nearest “cleat” ……….

 

you know you are “hanging on too tight” after Level 1 training when …………. you are at the UK Ship Simulator Centre and you get the urge to shout “Ready to tack, runners back” while “helming” a 200,000 tonne container carrier!

 

 

…………… actually it was Clipper Level 1 training down in the Solent in April and it was 4 Englishmen and women, a Scot (via Eastern Europe), a South American (via Miami), a Pacific Coast North American, an Italian and a Swiss …….. all under the watchful eye (and assessment) of a qualified Clipper skipper and a first mate who had previously competed in the race.

The weather was good, even though visibility in the Solent was a little patchy at times and the wind scarcely above Force 5 (20 knots). The training syllabus was “safety heavy” and comprehensive enough to cope with the mix of sailing experience present – from complete “newbie” to yacht owner and the assessment was rigorous with little or no quarter given. If you got something wrong you failed, and some did.

I’ve given my “first impressions” of a Clipper 68ft yacht in an earlier blog. They were all confirmed by my first experience at sea. My main aim during the week was to quickly learn all the sailing malarkey associated with “main engines” that you have to HOIST, learn the hitherto unfamiliar  terminology and hope that my supposedly extensive transferrable maritime skills did, in fact, transfer.

I had made it known during my Clipper interview that I would wish to be considered for additional crew responsibilities if my progress and performance were up to it. Now I was going to have the opportunity to put my “performance money” where my “interview mouth” was.

 

There were additional benefits from the experience. It gave me more opportunity to think through the practicalities of living, eating, sleeping, watchkeeping, racing and even cooking (Mother Watch) on a Clipper yacht. I found time to think about my kit and about how to pack it and transport it – in my case out to South America, home from Australia, out to China, home from the western seaboard of the United States and then out to, in all probability, New York, in that order. I ticked a whole myriad of otherwise trivial practical boxes – my sea-boots – good enough for training, not good enough for the Southern Ocean and North Pacific. My sailing knife – likewise. My headtorch – just the ticket, but I was probably going to need 4! During this first training week we visited the official kit suppliers for our race and were measured for the race issue clothing and sponsored/branded clothing that we will be supplied with. Final colours and branding will only be known when the boat sponsors are announced and we are all allocated to our race boats. Our crew allocation day will be in Portsmouth Guildhall on Saturday 11th May 2019 and is already in my diary ………… oh and in addition to all this …………… I learnt/re-learnt to sail 🙂

The aim of Level 1 was to introduce/reintroduce the basic principles of sailing, how a Clipper racing yacht functions, and stresses safety and the “Clipper Way” of doing things along with the principles of good seamanship. We exercised man overboard daily – with the man overboard dummy falling overboard having not been tethered to the yacht and while tethered to the boat, the latter being much more life threatening than you may first realise. Just think about it for a second or two …… struggling to keep your head clear of water being forced into your mouth and nose while you are towed along attached to a powerful 32 tonne racing yacht sailing at speed …….. Most of us had a go at going over the side to recover the “man.” During training we had the luxury of donning an immersion suit. For real two members of each watch will be expected to be wearing the swimmer recovery harness while at sea; two just in case the man overboard is the person wearing the harness!

We indulged in “tackathons” – tack (altering course putting the wind through the bow) after tack after tack after tack as we rotated positions around headsail, yankee, mainsail, and backstay winches and sheets, We hoisted and lowered the main sail, put reefs in and shook them out, trimmed and retrimmed yankee 1s, 2s and 3s. We gybed (putting the wind through the stern) and gybed again and ran racetracks up and down the Solent, we even anchored which, like everything on as Clipper racing yacht is an entirely mandraulic serial.  We worked (and reworked) winches, clutches and jammers and put our agility to the test racing around the upper deck correctly tethering and untethering against the clock. Some of us, but sadly not all, even had a go at helming, something I rarely had the opportunity to do in my previous life! We went in and out of Gosport and enjoyed two nights alongside in Cowes on the Isle of Wight. During evening lectures we learnt the anatomy of a sail, we talked about mainsail and headsail controls, we studied the points of sail, emergency and distress situations, basic collision avoidance and tied endless knots! And then, on the penultimate evening ……. the assessment. More stringent than I had imagined we were tested individually by the skipper and mate on knots (he picked any 4 or 5 out of about 9 – you tied them and explained why, where and how they would be used), other ropework, preparing the yacht for sea and coming alongside, points of sail, anatomy of a sail, correct loading and unloading of winches, tugman’s hitches, identification of all mainsail control lines and explaining their use, and on all aspects of safety including the drill for transmitting a mayday call, man overboard procedures and marking the electronic chart plotter in the navigation area, talking through the significance of the Cockpit Cautionary Zone and other main areas of danger on deck and the correct drill to don a lifejacket, carry out the required life jacket checks and successfully repack it. Most of the Clipper Race agility tests were completed earlier in the week including climbing onto the yacht without the use of a step or fender-step by using a spring line, unassisted. The slight irony of non use of the step was to come back to haunt me right at the end of the week . We were met on our return to Gosport by the Chairman of Clipper Ventures and Founder of the Clipper Race, Sir Robin Knox-Johnston, the first person to sail single handed non-stop around the world.  More about him and his exploits in a future blog. There then followed our final personal debriefs – I’ll cut a long story short and confirm I will be doing Level 2 training later this year – and then the final training serial – the deep clean. Everything that can come off the yacht to be cleaned comes off and is cleaned. Anything that cannot come off the yacht to be cleaned……. is cleaned anyway! And when I say deep, I mean DEEP. And when I say cleaned, I mean CLEANED. On reflection it’s little wonder that I observed what good condition these boats are in when I first stepped onboard on my interview day.

Oh………. before I forget. Regular readers will know I mentioned “a small accident” in my very first blog post (So How Did It All Start published on 13th May). To put it simply ……… I fell off the boat.

In my haste (first mistake, first lesson) to disembark, I clambered through the gap in the guardrails (to the right of Sir Robin in the picture above) still wearing (second mistake, second lesson) my fully packed and rather heavy rucksack. I “searched” for the step that had by now been rigged with my foot rather than looking (third mistake, third lesson), flipped the step and fell full length between the pontoon and the 30odd tonne 68ft yacht. As I fell I managed (just) to grab hold of the vertical metal stanchions either side of me but hung there up to my knees in water with my sea boots now rapidly filling. I did think that I was about to fall to the bottom of Gosport harbour wearing all my kit and a rucksack that was reasonably difficult to dislodge even when NOT under water and holding my breath. In a matter of seconds I could hold onto the stanchions no longer as the weight of my boots was dragging me down and once more I fell. This time, with a Tom Cruise-like agility for which I am NOT known I managed to catch the wooden step with the finger tips of both hands thus, I thought, prolonging my final drop for a few more seconds. By now I was waist deep, with my rucksack taking on water and rather hoping that the yacht did not choose this moment to move towards the jetty. Even when carrying a little excess weight I would make a poor fender! To my rescue at this 11th hour came Cliff (the skipper) and Lucia (fellow crew member) who rather unceremoniously dragged me clear of the water, the pontoon and the boat, by the straps of my rucksack.

The damage? Pride (fourth lesson – it REALLY does come before the Fall), shock (only really set it when I got home and tried to explain it all to Ruth) whiplash and bruising (it really WAS an unceremonious exit from the water!) and some impressive blood blisters to the fingers of both hands. Still ………… as the saying goes, worse things happen at sea!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

When I wrote my first blog on 13th May this year I closed with the promise that “what followed … interview, contact, medical, insurance, off to the Little Ship Club in London with Ruth, and Level 1 training (including a small accident)” would all follow in subsequent blogs  ……. so here goes. Time to do some pre-Level 1 training catch up.

Firstly, the interview. I drove down to Clipper HQ in Gosport early on the morning of Friday 3rd November last year. With me were 11 other hopeful-Clipperees. Some, like me, had not told anyone other than immediate nearest and dearest what we were up to that day and at least one brave individual hadn’t even told his wife he was attending the interview.  I was, quite frankly, still at the “let’s see if I like Clipper (probably), let’s see if Clipper likes me (hopefully)” phase. My fellow adventurers were a mix of ages, backgrounds and sailing experiences, with 2 contemplating the full circumnavigation, most others considering a single leg, and me looking at 4.

It was refreshing that the Clipper team who spoke to us did not pull any punches. Nothing was sugar-coated. Little or no talk about champagne sailing, glorious sunrises, the majesty of the seas or exciting encounters with marine wildlife. More about cold and wet plus physical and mental challenges (perm any one of the major ocean crossings!), baking heat and insufferable temperatures plus physical and mental challenges (the doldrums/equator crossings), sea sickness, exhaustion … oh and a bit more about cold and wet … moving about at a 45 degree angle, using the heads (toilet) at a 45 degree angle, cooking at a 45 degree angle, watchkeeping, no showers, no mirrors ……. sail, sleep, eat, repeat…. oh and a bit more about wet and that was INSIDE the yacht. The only good news was that I had, by now, been following the current edition of the race pretty much daily at http://www.clipperroundtheworld.com and had already thought most of this stuff through.

The interviews were one-on-one. Mine was conducted by David Cusworth, the current Clipper Reqruitment and Development Director and himself a previous Clipper Round The World yachtsman and Watch Leader. Relaxed, informative, gently probing, he covered background, yachting experience (this didn’t take long), maritime experience (this took a little longer!), expectations and aspirations, crew roles and extra responsibilities, training, medical, payment plans, what could be expected from the “Clipper family” and closed by saying that I would hear in a few days whether they would be offering me a contract.

The day in Gosport also included an opportunity to meet members of the Clipper support team and to crawl all over one of the Clipper 68ft training yachts and talk to a training Skipper. First impressions of a Clipper 68 – very good condition for a yacht that had completed 4 circumnavigations of the planet; big alongside in Gosport but, I imagined, small in the North Atlantic and even smaller in the North Pacific; sparse internally; packing my kit was going to need careful consideration. When could I get started!!!?

About 3 or 4 days later David e-mailed and told me I had been successful and that a contract would follow. When it did it was impressively thorough. More thorough in fact than any of my post-military contracts of employment and much more thorough than anything I ever signed in the Royal Navy, including the Official Secrets Act!

in pretty short order thereafter I went through the contact in detail, joined the on-line Clipper Crew Hub and accessed a wealth of additional information, completed a detailed medical questionnaire followed by a medical with my GP and more medical forms, applied for and was accepted  for Clipper specific personal and travel related insurance, arranged my training and fee payment (all payment must be completed by May 2019) and booked my Clipper 1 training, the first of 4 assessed training periods I must complete prior to race start in the summer of 2019. Then Ruth and I went to watch the Ashes cricket in Australia over Christmas.

On Sunday 14th January Ruth and I joined other successful applicants and supporters at The Little Ship’s Club on the Thames in London for an afternoon session of briefings (Sir Robin Knox-Johnston, David Cusworth, Ben Rowley – the Director of Training, Grace Kitching – Media and PR) and a panel discussion with 4 crew from the current edition of the Race who had, by then, completed Leg 1 (Liverpool to Punta del Este) and Leg 2 (Punta del Este to Cape Town) of the Race. Lots of “top tips” about training, fitness, personal kit, living onboard a Clipper 70 and, in one particular case, losing one and a half stone in weight over two legs of the race!

It began to really feel that the “YOU?” in the Clipper Advert posters should be replaced with “Yes, ME!”