If I’ve programmed this correctly then this is another blog posts that goes back in time as I travel. Right now, as this is published, I should be at sea. Not, I hasten to add, as a crew member on the UNICEF Clipper yacht, but hopefully as a foot passenger on the Buenos Aires to Calina ferry across the River Plate between Argentina and Uruguay. The lead yachts could well be in Punta del Este by now and it will be 6 days before I must “report for duty” and 11 days to my own Race Start. Time to wind the clock back again to THE Race Start and the run up to 1st September.

The Bank Holiday Monday prior to Race Start saw me don my boat-tour-guide rig to show, first Ruth, and then son Alastair, daughter-in-law-law Sarah, brother Paul, and sister-in-law-to-be Janine around the UNICEF yacht alongside in St Katherine’s Dock, London. We had a good crawl around the yacht – in some cases quite literally, and the beautiful day and hot weather only served to point out the lack of air conditioning! For Ruth it was her second look around the inside of a Clipper yacht; she remains unconvinced it constitutes a sensible means of travel, and for Alastair, Sarah, Paul and Janine this was a first. Sadly Ruth had to depart early to meet other commitments back home but the rest of us finished the day with suitable refreshments.

It was also my first opportunity to look around the Clipper Race village at St Katherine’s Dock.

Our Code 3 Spinnaker was also available to “sign” with donations going to the UNICEF UK charity. Ruth and I both signed.

Some of the UNICEF crew were already living onboard the yacht by then, most notably Holly, our sail repair team-leader and a circumnavigator from the West coast of the US and Joe, with whom I will cross the South Atlantic this year and the North Atlantic next year. Joe is doing Legs 1, 2, 7 and 8.

Various other members of the crew were around and between guided tours I helped Joe, Sarah (who I did Level 4 with in July – see Blog 81: Race 2 Day 3 latest ….. 4800 nautical miles still left to race, so let’s wind the clock back a bit, published 18 September) who is doing Leg 4 around Australia, and Thom who is doing Leg 1 of this edition of the Race but has competed in TWO previous editions  and has the t-shirts and hats to prove it, empty the sail locker of all the sails so everything below decks could be cleaned for a media event later that afternoon.

The UNICEF yacht also moved berths for this filming..

which also produced this excellent, Ian Wiggin-led guided tour of OUR yacht…..

The Tuesday and Wednesday of that week saw me dashing between London, Harwich and Eccleshall before I was back in London at St Katherine’s Dock again to collect my UNICEF branded kit – a rather smart UNICEF/Musto jacket and a couple of UNICEF Clipper shirts – and join a host of UNICEF crew members for the official naming ceremony of our yacht .

Now I’ve actually only ever been to a couple of ship naming/launch ceremonies previously. One was the naming of a big cruise liner in Southampton when I was the Captain of the city’s adopted name-sake destroyer, and the second was as the Captain   Designate of HMS BULWARK as she went down the slipway at Barrow.

What all three ceremonies had in common (apart from years of maritime tradition, strong sense of family and belonging etc etc etc) was ………………. champagne!

The following night (Friday) Ruth and I were back in London for the pre-race party only to then drive back to Eccleshall that same night (getting home at 0500 on Saturday morning) in order to be “on duty” at the annual Eccleshall Show at 0630! On Sunday we were ……… back in London! It was Race Start Day.

The atmosphere was fantastic with thousands of people in St Katherine’s Dock and many more lining the banks of the Thames. All the circumnavigators and the crew completing Leg 1 were already onboard. There were at least a dozen or so other crew members who had come down to London to see our team mates off. It was exciting and emotional and, if I’m being completely honest, made me wish I was doing Leg 1. To my very great surprise, having popped down onto the pontoon and then onboard the yacht to say our farewells, those of us who were fortunate to be present in our UNICEF branded clothing were invited to join the circumnavigators and the Leg 1 crew who were about to sail away from London, in the farewell parade and stage appearance prior to the yachts slipping their lines. A couple of my team mates who had collected their branded kit that very morning just had time to slip away and change. A few more continued to watch from the quay side. I felt honoured and privileged to be taking part. Unfortunately it did mean Ruth was left watching from the quay as once onboard we were not allowed off the yacht until it was time to parade and, as the last yacht programmed to sail, we were the last team to parade.

As is often the way at these times, as a team, we invite each other to share thoughts. More often than not this is done by throwing a knotted rope around. When the rope comes to you, it’s your turn to share your thoughts. Today’s topic, not unnaturally, was “what are you most excited about and what are you most worried about?” Not necessarily in that order. When it came to my turn it was quite easy. I talked about the excitement I felt for my team mates sailing in just a few hours and the enormous unexpected privilege I felt at being able to join in what I had always assumed would be their parade today. When it came to concerns I explained that when I left Ruth on the quay  I had told her I was just “popping onboard to say a few quick goodbyes”, but as I had not returned my real concern was that Ruth might be thinking I was about to do Leg 1 after all!

Eventually it became our turn to parade around the various basins that constitute St Katherine’s Dock and then finally up onto the stage to the “our song” – see Blog 85: Here We Go, published 7 October. A quick interview by Ian and then, to much cheering and waving, we made our way back to the boat.

The event was televised and friends watching on BOTH sides of the Atlantic sent us screenshots, the cameraman appearing to take a particular shine to Ruth 😉

A screen shot from yesterday’s live stream of Race Start from London – captured by friends on BOTH sides of the Atlantic!

This time it really was time for the goodbyes (at least until Punta for me)

and I rejoined Ruth and the other supporters to watch the Fleet proceed out of the Dock and into the Thames.

So, a few other thoughts as I waved them off and was left looking at an empty St Katherine’s Dock? First and foremost it was admiration for my fellow team mates, and all the other Clipperees, departing today. I knew how much more I had yet to organise and sort out in my life before I would be ready to Race and all these people had already achieved that. In particular a huge admiration for those about to spend the next 11 months circumnavigating the globe. I could see the mixture of excitement, anticipation and nervousness in everyone’s demeanour and hear it in their voices and I was excited and nervous for them in turn.

In the final few seconds before UNICEF slipped her lines someone in the crowd turned to me and said, “she looks as if she is straining to go,” and it was true, the yacht did look eager to depart and was pulling at her lines. No sudden gust of wind. No impatient revving of the engine from Ian. No prop wash from departing sister yachts. Although I too had noticed it, that restless movement indicating a desire to depart, I didn’t really give it another thought …………. until that is, I read the skipper’s final pre-sailing message to the UNICEF team when I finally reached home. But a little more about that in my next blog………

For Diabetes UK and the National Autistic Society see:

https://justgiving.com/teams/keithsclipperadventure

and for UNICEF UK see:

https://justgiving.com/KeithWinstanley-TeamUNICEF

Please take a look. Thank you.

Right now I am somewhere between Madrid and Buenos Aires (in an aeroplane rather than a yacht) while the Clipper Fleet is (very roughly) in the general vicinity of Rio de Janeiro off the South East coast of Brazil and – again very roughly – 1000 nautical miles from Punta del Este, or at least the centre of the pack is. The lead yachts, Visit Sanya and Qingdao who are pretty much neck and neck, are less than 800 nautical miles from the finish line. The current tail end Charlie (Imagine Your Korea) is still over 1200 nautical miles away and Unicef and Zhuhai are locked in a tight battle for 5th and 6th place about now. This post comes to you courtesy of the pre-programmed “publish” facility so its time to wind-the-clock-back a couple of months ……… Portsmouth Prep Week!

At the beginning of August a whole bunch of us “volunteered” and gathered in Portsmouth immediately before the Fleet sailed around to London for a busy week of final preps onboard the team UNICEF yacht. It was a similar story on each yacht in the Fleet. By now many of the circumnavigators were living in Portsmouth, if not actually onboard the yachts, and long-distance travellers signed up for Leg 1 (from Australia, South Africa, China and the US for example) were in similar positions. So most (but not quite all) of our circumnavigators were there. It was a kind of team-building-week-Mark2 and it was also extremely busy.

No list can be completely exhaustive but to give you an example ………… all the old sails came off the boat and at various times all the brand new sails arrived. In the case of the latter these had then to be unpacked, marked-up accordingly, and then re-packed. And re-stowed. Some of this we could do onboard, some on the pontoon and some “elsewhere”. You need to read on for the “elsewhere” bit. In the case of the main sail (and at the risk of stating the blindingly obvious) it actually had to be rigged and fitted to the mast! Oh and on the subject of rigging …… all the main rigging is new and EVERY sheet – the lines that operate the sails – is also new and these had to be run through the appropriate deck fittings and cut to size. Ends had to be whipped with whipping twine and those areas most likely to chafe had to be additionally protected. All the jammers (through which these lines are run) were taken apart, deep cleaned, and reassembled – a somewhat tricky job undertaken by two people to prevent important items (such as a strong internal spring!!!) pinging over the side! A similar maintenance operation was conducted on all our winches.

All the safety netting on the upper deck was removed and new safety netting rigged, taking care to cut it correctly to allow for both the “gates” on the port and starboard sides just forward of the helm and the traveller. All the internal fresh, grey and black water systems (the tanks are new) were traced and sea outlets checked. The engine was serviced and various elements labelled to help at-sea maintenance particularly when cold, wet and tired. Our new batteries were checked. All the engineering spares we carry were sorted, labelled (re-ordered in some cases) and re-stowed. John Dawson – one of our circumnavigators and “lead” Doc)- received, checked, catalogued and packed all our medical supplies, both routine and emergency, various crew members built new platforms at the helm stations on which our helmsmen will brace themselves during periods at a 45 degree angle and ALL the safety equipment – most if not all of it new for this race – was carefully checked and stowed. Oh and the weather for all this in our beautiful August summer ………….. AWFUL. The first day of Prep Week coincided with the first day of the Cowes Sailing Week …… and the first day of Cowes was CANCELLED due to storms, high winds and rain.  A combination of all three summed up the week.

Various members of the team came and went during the week as visa interviews, other specialist training, family commitments and work/business were also addressed and the week finished with a BBQ event hosted by the sponsors of WTC Logistics, an event I sadly missed due to other commitments. I intend to make up for that in the future!

There were two other off-yacht events that I really must mention. Firstly, unpacking and packing a spinnaker (ok make that THREE spinnakers and a wind-seeker) takes space. Lots of space when dealing with a sail the size of a tennis court. Ideally you also need a fairly calm day. We were lucky with a gap in the weather – we had to pick our moment – and disappeared to a Portsmouth park for this particular evolution. It will be interesting to see if any grass stains mark our spinnakers when we arrive in Punta. That should make for interesting conversation, but perhaps not as interesting as some conversations and some stains…. so to avoid THOSE, our spinnaker unpacking was preceded by anti-dog-poo patrols of the park! NOT something I ever thought I would associate with a round the world yacht race!

The other major off-the-yacht activity was victualling. We have to eat and drink. So supplies for each crew for each day of Leg 1 had to be received, checked, unpacked (no unnecessary weight – this is a race remember) and then stowed as per the menu for each day in marked dry bags. All the ingredients for a complete days menu (pus bread and cake mixes etc) for 24 people likely to burn up to 5000 calories a day for 40+ days. All the labels were removed from EVERY CAN (if they get wet they will fall off/become unreadable anyway and create a great deal of mess) so every can was then inscribed with its contents. Tempting as it was to label tins of peaches as peas …….. the temptation was resisted! It was quite a back-breaking operation. Oh and then ……… all the bags, plus additional bags containing the necessary bulk foods, condiments, snacks etc) had to be transported back to the yacht ….. and stowed in such a way that they can be FOUND and RETRIEVED by Mother Watch at the start of their cooking duties AND the rest of us still have space to live and work, and maybe even sleep!

It was a great week. This is what it looked like in pictures and time-lapsed video, oh and before I forget, two editorial comments on the final video ….. 1. Check out the dance moves!!!! and 2. It was Grahams birthday but I cant remember what the drink was!!!!:

The Portsmouth-Park-Sail-Packing-Team (plus some young local supporters!) From left to Right: Sophie, Karen, Lindsay, Graham, Anthonie, me, Alex, Mike, Holly, Mike, Nicky (Mike Miller’s wife), Joe, John, Angie, Dan)

For Diabetes UK and the National Autistic Society see:

https://justgiving.com/terams/keithsclipperadventure

and for UNICEF UK see

https://justgiving.com/KeithWinstanley-TeamUNICEF

Please take a look. Thank you.

Its been a VERY hectic couple of weeks but …………………………… Ruth and I depart for South America (Buenes Aires, Montevideo and then Punta del Este) TODAY!!!!

Never has it been more apt to play the official team UNICEF song, selected by the crew earlier this year. This song plays every time “we” sail from a port during the Race and will be played when we get a podium finish 🙂

HERE WE GO!

I hope to continue to blog, including from the yacht during the Race, although uploading photos may have to wait until stop overs – for me for the rest of this year that means Cape Town, South America in November and Fremantle, Western Australia in  December. Some blogs (already written) will appear as I travel over the next 48 hours or so courtesy of the pre-programmed-publish facility; the miracles of modern technology!

For Diabetes UK and the National Autistic Society see:

https://justgiving.com/teams/keithsclipperadventure

and for UNICEF UK see:

https://justgiving.com/KeithWinstanley-TeamUNICEF

Please take a look. Thank You.

Normal “service” will be resumed from….. Argentina!

No, not a post about inappropriate actions or language ….. but – as of about now – pretty much everyone on this edition of the Clipper Race (even tail-end-Charlie Imagine Your Korea) are now sailing in the Southern Hemisphere having crossed the Equator – Crossing The Line. They will not be back in the Northern Hemisphere this DECADE! And some form of suitable ceremony will have been carried out in every yacht of the Clipper Fleet.

Its quite an event in any mariners career or time at sea and I have been fortunate enough to do it 10 times – twice in the Pacific, twice in the Atlantic, four times in the Indian Ocean and twice in the South China Sea/Java Sea! Somewhere in an old box I have a rather faded certificate, first signed back in 1983, to prove it ………. signed (obviously!) by King Neptune himself!

No one is quite sure of the origins of the associated “Crossing The Line Ceremony” but sailors rarely need much of an excuse to let their hair down. Crossing the Line and its associated rituals had certainly become a well established tradition in the Royal Navy as long ago as the eighteenth century. In HMS ENDEAVOR, under the command of Captain James Cook, a seaman called Joseph Banks described how the crew drew up a list of everyone on board, including cats and dogs, and interrogated them as to whether they had crossed the equator when sailing in the Pacific in 1768. If they had not, they had to choose to give up their allowance of wine for four days (NOT Likely methinks!) or undergo a ducking ceremony in which they were ducked three times into the ocean.

I’ve written about Robert Fitzroy before (see Blog 23: The weather theme continued ….. but spare a thought and a prayer this Sunday for Abhilash Tomy, published 23 September 2018) but when he was Captain of HMS BEAGLE he suggested the practice had developed from earlier ceremonies in Spanish, Portuguese and Italian vessels passing notable headlands. Fitzroy thought it was beneficial to morale. During the second voyage of HMS BEAGLE, on 17 February 1832 one of the first crew members to be “initiated” was one Charles Darwin (of naturalist, geologist and biologist fame) who noted in his diary that he was led up on deck by “four of King Neptune’s constables”, as “buckets of water were thundered all around.” Darwin was then “placed on a plank, which could be easily tilted up into a large bath of water. They then lathered my face and mouth with pitch and paint, & scraped some of it off with a piece of roughened iron hoop – a signal being given I was tilted head over heels into the water, where two men received me and ducked me. – at last, glad enough, I escaped. Most of the others were treated much worse, dirty mixtures being put into their mouths and rubbed on their faces. The whole ship was a shower bath & water was flying about in every direction: of course not one person, even the Captain, got clear of being wet through.” There is a detailed account of the ceremony onboard HMS BLOSSOM (we don’t name our ships like we used too! ….. thankfully!!) written somewhat earlier, in 1825, and its clear from my own memories that it hasn’t changed much in the intervening 160 years or so!

No digital cameras or mobile phones back in 1983 so the next 4 photos took a bit of digging out ……..

And if you want a glimpse into what might – or might not – have happened onboard the Big Blue Boat then I can do no better than point you in the direction of Skipper Ian Wiggin’s Day 16 blog on the official Clipper Race website http://www.clipperroundtheworld.com

Meanwhile, here’s a 1922 silent movie blast-from-the-past crossing the line ceremony onboard HMS HOOD ….. like I said, nothing much has changed ……

For Diabetes UK and the National Autistic Society see

https://justgiving.com/teams/keithsclipperadventure

and for UNICEF UK see

https://justgiving.com/KeithWinstanley-TeamUNICEF

Please take a look. Thank you.

Regular readers will be aware that almost a year ago now I wrote two weather related blogs that made comment about my weather forecasting abilities (or not) and my personal experiences with hurricanes. See Blog 22: Florence, Mangkhut and Helene…… with memories of Michael Fish, Daria and Luis, published 17 September 2018 and Blog 23: The weather theme continued … but spare a thought and a prayer this Sunday for Abhilash Tomy, published 23 September 2018. I’ve enjoyed re-reading them this morning.

24 hours ago I started to write a blog with the title “Dollydrums! WHAT Dollydrums?????” following my previous attempt to explain the Doldrums and the doldrums corridor rules, as immediately ahead of the Clipper fleet, and directly across the doldrums was TROPICAL STORM LORENZO!!!! So much for flat calm and wind holes!!!!

(Jerry and Karen are interesting and Lorenzo starts at the 4 minute mark)

and for busier readers here is a shorter version…

So on the race tracker the normal shades of dark blue to light blue on the wind overlay indicating slack wind gradients and wind holes had been replaced with the much angrier looking darker oranges, reds and purples of 30knots + ….. some Windhole, some doldrums NOT!

However, this morning, normal doldrums service has been resumed. Lorenzo continues his charge NW into the Atlantic and the darker shades of blue and light winds have returned to the doldrums corridor. When last I checked Visit Sanya, leading the Fleet, was down to a speed-over-the-ground of 1.3 knots with over 3,200 nautical miles to run to Punta del Este. Which is just as well as I still have three “wind the clock back” catch-up-blogs to write before the end of the month!!!!

For Diabetes UK and the National Autistic Society see

https://justgiving.com/teams/keithsclipperadventure

and for UNICEF UK see

https://justgiving.com/KeithWinstanley-TeamUNICEF

Please take a look. Thank you.

The Fleet appears to be split into two distinct packs of a lead group of 6 and a trailing pack of 5. Ha Long Bay Vietnam have been the first Yacht this edition of the Race to use Stealth Mode, emerging from their invisibility cloak in 3rd place. Right now the leading yachts are off the coast of Western Sahara roughly half way between the Canary Islands and Cape Verde Islands. The Scoring Gate lies ahead, with Sanya, Qingdao and Ha Long Bay looking best placed but there is still much to play for. Further ahead, but drawing ever closer, is the Doldrums and the Doldrums Corridor.

Now for the busy reader I can cover the Doldrums Corridor rules in just five words ………  You Can Use Your Motor.

Simples. Busy readers may now move on.

But, like most things Clipper it’s not really quite that simple. As I touched on in a previous blog (see Blog 80: They’re Off Again, published 15 September), the Doldrums, or the Intertropical Convergence Zone (ITCZ) is the area where the northeast and southeast trade winds converge. It encircles the globe near the thermal equator, though its specific position varies with the seasons. Within the ITCZ  the average winds are slight. As trans-Atlantic sailing became more common-place in the 18th Century, sailors named this belt the doldrums because of the calm, inactive winds. To avoid, or rather reduce the time Clipper yachts may be becalmed within the ITCZ the Doldrums Corridor and the Rules were established.

For those interested in the detail ………

The positioning of Doldrums Corridor and the North and South Gates are defined in the race instructions. Both lie north of the equator for this race and look like this:

Each yacht is permitted to use its engine whilst in the Corridor subject to the following criteria:

1. Yachts are ONLY allowed to motor-sail for a maximum of 6 degrees of Latitude which must take a minimum time of 60 hours to complete.
2. All yachts MUST cease motor-sailing at 3 degrees North regardless of whether they have completed 6 degrees of latitude under engine.
3. All yachts MUST declare their intention to motor-sail a minimum of 3 hours before doing so. 60 hours elapsed time will begin to be calculated from this declared time regardless of whether the engine is being used or not.
4. When a yacht’s engine is started or stopped a declaration must be made to the Race Office within 3 hours, stating the time UTC, latitude and longitude and a digital photograph taken. This will allow the calculation of 6 degrees of latitude to be made.
5. If 6 degrees of latitude is covered by the yacht before 60 hours has elapsed the yacht must REMAIN at that position of latitude. A declaration must be made to the Race Office within 3 hours and a digital photo taken.
6. If a yacht must wait for 60 hours to elapse then before resuming racing it must return to its declared latitude. A declaration must be made to the Race Office within 3 hours after resuming racing and a digital photo taken so that the restart position can be verified.
7. Once a yacht has declared their intention to motor-sail the request cannot be rescinded.
8. All yachts MUST report their time of crossing latitude 9 degrees North within 3 hours of doing so regardless of whether they are sailing or not. This is so an elapsed time of 60 hours can be calculated, if for example a team decide to start motor-sailing at 5 degrees N they clearly cannot complete 6 degrees of latitude before 3 degrees N is reached.

Ruth is SO glad she asked!!!!!

For Diabetes and the National Autistic Society see:

https://www.justgiving.com/Teams/keithsclipperadventure

For UNICEF UK see:

https://www.justgiving.com/KeithWinstanley-TeamUNICEF

Please take a look. Thank you.

Ok so with just less than 5000 miles still left to race its clear everyone (eventually) chose to close the Moroccan coast rather than stick to the Rhumb line route, in search of stronger winds. Right now it’s beginning to look like Punta del Este may chose the route between the Canary Islands with the rest of the leading pack – Sanya, Qingdao, Dare to Lead, Ha Long Bay Vietnam and Unicef currently shaping to go between the Canary Islands and the African coast. It’s Leg 1, Race 2, Day 3, Hour 4! Time to wind the clock back and catch up with Blogs I never quite got around to writing……..

Firstly the Unicef team-building weekend 🙂 A full weekend, in more ways than one, over the first full weekend in July when ALL Clipper teams, with as many crew members as each could muster, “disappeared” on team building weekends around the country. We chose to descend on Blackwood Forest in Hampshire. We had a very good turn out – over 30 of us – in log cabins throughout the forest coming together for various team building exercises and events, eating together, a great BBQ, a perfect opportunity to get to know each other, and the environment in which to discuss our group aims, our hopes, our strategies and our values. If any of you have ever done similar corporate events then you can imagine exactly what we got up to!

To cut a long story short it was an excellent event, well planned by those of the team who volunteered to organise it way back at Crew Allocation, facilitated extremely well by skipper Ian and AQP Mike and as much fun as I can remember having in a field/forest with …………..…. pieces of pasta and marshmallows (building a free standing structure with other crew doing Leg 6 across the Pacific!),  multiple variations on the game of “tag”, some GPS assisted (or in our case not really assisted) orienteering – I think today’s posh word for this is Geotagging or some such! and a rather ingenious race involving a fresh chicken’s egg (and in the Leg 6 team’s case socks and a single training shoe) in which we achieved a podium finish and only lost out on top spot by “rounding a mark” on the wrong side – a ruling which we strongly refuted but as the skipper was the sole judge we eventually chose discretion as the better part of valour and shut up!

Sophie, standing, far left.

Two days later I was back down in Gosport, back onboard a now branded Unicef boat (CV31) for the second time (see also Blog 60: Level 3 Training, Part 2, published 4 May 2019) for my final Level 4 training. This was a first time to sail with both Ian and Mike, with a crew made up entirely of other Unicef crew members:  Ian (skipper), Mike (AQP), Angie (circumnavigator), Sarah (Leg 4), Sophie (Legs 1 and 3), Ursi (Legs 1 and 8), Jo (Leg 7) , Lis (Legs 6, 7 and 8), Juscinta (Leg 5), Anthonie (Legs 1, 2 and 3), Shaneil (Leg 6), Beau (Leg 4) , Giacomo (Leg 4) and me! (Legs 2, 3, 6 and 8). So Ian, Mike, Angie, Sophie, Ursi and Anthonie are afloat right now and I will race at some point with Ian, Mike, Angie, Sophie, Ursi, Lis, Anthonie, and Shaneil.

Level 4 started with collecting our Musto kit (See Blog 24: Does/Will My Bum Look Big In This?, published 28 September 2018) and finished with the usual Clipper Race Assessment (the Test!) another deep clean, and a late lunch in the Boathouse. In between we practised towing another Clipper yacht and being towed, transferring stores and personnel via the yacht’s dingy (in this case “Bob” the man-overboard dummy simulating a casualty), hoisted storm sails, anchored, practised racing line-starts, practiced a “Le Mans” start, hoisted/letter-box dropped/packed/and re-hoisted(!) all three codes of Spinnaker and the lighter “wind-seeker” sail (it does what it says on the tin!) and, over the last few days raced the other 10 Clipper yachts – also at sea on Level 4 training – around the Solent and across the English Channel, along the coast of Normandy in sight of beaches I know well from the shore-side perspective, and then back to Portsmouth. We experienced life at an angle (again) and in my case the difficulty of getting into a top bunk at 40odd degrees and the “pain” of being becalmed – quite literally going NOWHERE – in very light airs for a 6 hour period.  The racing aspects taught us how to do everything we had safely done during Levels 1, 2 and 3 but much, much faster!

Three one-second video clips!:

and I promise I am actually packing that spinnaker not just hugging it!

Flat calm and going nowhere fast!:

I’ll admit I’m rather envious of Ian, Mike, Angie, Sophie, Anthonie and Ursi off the Moroccan coast right now.

https://justgiving.com/teams/keithsclipperadventure

https://justgiving.com/KeithWinstanley-TeamUNICEF

Please take a look. Thank you.

Race 2 of Leg 1 from Portimao, Portugal to Punta del Este in Uruguay starts in just a little under 20 minutes time. 5,195 nautical miles across the Atlantic, across the equator for the first time (and the crossing the line ceremony where King Neptune visits and Pollywogs become Shellbacks – “obviously” I can hear you say …. more about that in a future blog!) and through the doldrums, this race is expected to take about 30 days with the yachts expected into Punta del Este in the window 14-16 October and Ruth and I fly to South America on the 7th😀 The first tactical decision is likely to be in the vicinity of the Canary Islands. Do you route east, west or straight through? Pick the wrong route and you can get caught in the lee of the land. The Doldrums, are both a physical and a mental challenge with unpredictable conditions, big wind holes, squalls, and high temperatures.

With a further 11 race points available for the first yacht across the line, bonus points are again available via a Scoring Gate to port of the rhumb line track, this time off the coast of Mauritania and north of the Cape Verde Islands and an Ocean Sprint off the NE coast of Brazil between 5 degrees and 10 degrees south of the equator. To cope with the doldrums, a doldrums corridor also exists  – more about the tactics of the Doldrums Corridor in a future blog. The Scoring Gate, Doldrums corridor and Ocean Sprint positions are available on the Race Viewer (See Blog 75: The Race Viewer – and a health warning. This can be addictive, published 2 September) for those following the Race (and who, like me, are already addicted). If you haven’t taken a look then I would recommend it.

And in “breaking news” Qingdao and Punta del Este have both elected to play their joker on this race, thus potentially doubling their race points. So there is much up for grabs.

https://www.justgiving.com/teams/keithsclipperadventure

https://www.justgiving.com/KeithWinstanley-TeamUNICEF

Please take a look. Thank you.

Race 1 turned out to be even more gripping to watch on Race Viewer than I had imagined, more so I suspect because of my own imminent involvement, but even guests at my brother’s wedding were hooked on it last weekend!

All eleven teams managed to experience pretty such everything in this first Race, from strong tidal conditions and light, if not very light winds in the Thames Estuary, strong upwind conditions for the first three days in the English Channel and then great downwind surfing conditions sailing down the Bay of Biscay. For those not used to ocean sailing then upwind sailing can be very tough – the boats are heeled over at 45 degrees and even moving around below decks takes great effort. It saps energy and even makes going to the heads (toilet), getting dressed, and getting in and out of your bunk tough, demanding evolutions.  The downwind conditions in the Bay may well have flattened the Fleet off and produced a more even boat but with strong winds from astern the fleet screamed down the west coast of Portugal with boats frequently experiencing  speeds in excess of 25 knots. At one stage the UNICEF team – pretty much EVERYONE apart from the Mother Watch preoparing meals – were gathered at the stern, behind the helm, to help balance the boat and keep the stern in the water and thus the boat under control. So much for time “off watch!”

Those following on Race Viwer will already know that Qingdao, Unicef and GoToBermuda jockeyed for the lead leaving the Channel and across the Bay of Biscay and for pretty much all of the scream down the Portuguese Coast. Unicef chose not to head for the Scoring Gate but the 3 Chinese boats, Qingdao, Visit Sanya and Zhuhai all did notching up 3, 2 and 1 points respectively, the first points of the 2019-2020 Race. Unicef were the first boat to cross both the start line and the finish line of the Ocean Sprint, with Qingdao hot on their heels but neither boat scored. Fastest across the Ocean Sprint was Punta del Este (15 hours, 2 minutes and 26 seconds), second fastest was Ha Long Bay Vietnam (15 hours, 51 minutes and 4 seconds) and third fastest Zhuhai (15 hours and 53 minutes), picking up 3, 2 and 1 point respectively. The highest reported yacht speed was logged at 29.7 knots onboard Ha Long Bay Vietnam.

In the closing stages of the race it was nip and tuck between Qingdao and Unicef but both were caught in very light wind conditions – it actually took Unicef almost 24 hours to complete the last 20 miles, and both boats were beaten into Portimao by Punta del Este and Dare to Lead, both of whom made best use of fickle wind conditions and, as the land cools off at night and the sea remains warm, a breeze can develop between the land and the sea that can probably go out a couple of miles. Punta del Este and Dare to Lead both proved that it is worth looking for! The relatively slow finish meant night-time arrival with Punta del Este finishing at 00:45 and 22 secs UTC on 9th Sept, one hour and 3 seconds ahead of Dare to Lead. Unicef finished 6th a little over 6 minutes behing Visit Sanya and mere minutes ahead of Imagine Your Korea finishing in 7th.

As someone in the Unicef team joked on social media, “We’re pretty good at Ocean Racing but need to improve on getting into port!”

The full arrival times were:

Punta del Este                   00:45:22          Total points:   14 (11 for 1st and 3 for Ocean Sprint)

Dare to Lead                      01:45:25          Total Points:   10

Qingdao                                   ?                   Total Points:   12 (9 for 3rd and 3 for Scoring Gate)

Zhuhai                                 02:55:04          Total Points:   10 (8 for 4th and 1ea for OS and SG)

Visit Sanya                          03:17:22          Total Points:   9 (7 for 5th and 2 for Scoring Gate)

Unicef                                   03:                   Total Points:   6

Imagine Your Korea          03:25:04          Total Points:   5

Ha Long Bay Vietnam       04:09:12          Total Points:   6 (4 for 8th and 2 for Ocean Sprint)

GoToBermuda                    05:00:12          Total Points:   3

Seattle                                  11:48:50          Total Points:   2

WTC Logistics                     13:38:03          Total Points:   1

………… and in other breaking news  my joining instructions for Leg 2 arrived yesterday!!! and behind closed doors in the sitting room (beyond the reach of Arthur the dog) my packing is beginning to take shape.

Thank you to all who have already donated to my various charity causes. As I explained when I first set up this blog back in April 2018, I am funding my participation in the 2019-2020 Race, my additional insurance, all my kit, and all the travel myself. But I am

also raising money for 3 charities – Diabetes UK, the National Autistic Society and UNICEF UK. I’ve written before about the last two (See Blog 35: The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time …… and The Reason I Jump, published 26 Nov 2018 – and incidentally one of my favourite blog posts – plus Blog 36: PS…The photo that almost got away!, published

9 December 2018, plus Blog 43: Thank you to all who donated last year, published 9 January 2019 and Blog 46: Making Waves for Children – UNICEF, published 7 February 2019 – before I knew I was part of the UNICEF team.

I will write about diabetes and my condition before I depart for South America in a little over 3 weeks time but in the meantime here are the links to my JustGiving pages:

http://www.justgiving.com/teams/keithsclipperadventure

and

http://www.justgiving.com/KeithWinstanley-TeamUNICEF

Please take a look. Thank you.