Thanks to Polaroid Eyewear, in September this year I will participate in the Clipper 09-10 round the world race by racing the first leg from Hull (England) to Rio de Janeiro (Brazil) via La Rochelle (France) – my home town incidentally.
I thought I would keep you updated on my progress towards the start of the race and later on during the race from the boat.
Clipper Round the World Yacht Race – Where does it come from?
The Clippers most known are the Tea Clippers. These tall ships were optimised for speed to go to China and back for the tea industry in record time via the Cape of Good Hope (South Africa). Their downfall was the invention of steam power and the opening of the Suez Canal.
The Clipper name comes from their narrow and forward raked bow (front of the boat) that was designed to ‘clip’ through the waves.
The other tall ships that gained notoriety for sailing on the high seas were the Windjammers, designed for cargo transportation rather than speed, most of them transporting goods from the East coast to the West coast of America via the notorious and dangerous Cape Horn (South America). Their downfall also being the introduction of steam power and the opening of the Panama Canal.
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Clipper – Prinz Albert “The Prinz Albert,” 1897, Rehs Galleries, Inc., New York City |
Windjammer – Herzogin Cecilie
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A lot of the clippers where built on the Clyde and, Dumbarton, where Polaroid Eyewear is located was one of the main shipbuilding areas on the Clyde. One of the most renowned Clippers around the world, the Cutty Sark, was built in Dumbarton at the Scott & Linton shipyard. She is the last Clipper from the 1800s left in the world.
Image by Atelier Joly, The Cutty Sark in Greenwich, London, UK
Going around the world for small sailing boats (small compared to these tall ships but still 40 to 60 feet long) is not something new. One of the first man to do it single handily, albeit with a number of stopovers, and who is considered as the grandfather of single handed round the world sailing was the Canadian Joshua Slocum in 1895, leaving from Boston, MA, USA and returning to Newport, RI, USA.
In 1966, the British pilot and sailor Sir Francis Chichester was the first man to sail around the world single handily in two stages only (Plymouth – Sydney – Plymouth) following the Clipper route and using their recorded speed as a benchmark.
In 1968, another British sailor, Sir Robin Knox-Johnston, decided to sail around the world single-handily non-stop. He competed in the Times Golden Globe Race against several other sailors including the French sailor Bernard Moitessier and is what today’s Vendee Globe race is based upon. Sir Robin won the race and became the first man to circumnavigate the globe single handily, without stopping. When he arrived back in Plymouth and was asked by customs where he was from he replied Plymouth.
In 1971, Sir Charles Blyth, a Scottish rower and sailor, completed the last thing left in ocean sailing by becoming the first man to sail single handily around the world without stop the ‘wrong’ way. The first woman to do it was Dee Caffari (a British sailor who had Chay Blyth as her mentor) in 2006. She has just finished the last edition of the Vendee Globe, and doing so has become the first woman to have sailed around the world both ways, single handily and non-stop.
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The Spray – Joshua Slocum
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Gipsy Moth IV – Francis Chichester |
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Suhaili – Robin Knox-Johnston Photo credit PPL |
British Steel – Chay Blyth |
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Joshua – Moitessier Maritime Museum, La Rochelle |
Aviva – Dee Caffari Source: http://www.avivaoceanracing.com |
There is indeed a ‘right’ way and a ‘wrong’ way to sail around the world. Due to the earth spinning movement, the winds, currents and waves move around the globe in an easterly fashion. It is much easier to sail with the wind and waves rather than against them. Therefore the ‘right’ way to circumnavigate the globe is to sail towards the East, passing the Cape of Good Hope, South of New Zealand then the Cape Horn. The ‘wrong’ and hard way, both for sailor and boat, is to sail the same route but going West and starting by Cape Horn.
It is Chay Blyth that first came up with the idea of circumnavigation with ‘amateur’ crews. Whereas a non-stop version would be too difficult to manage, he however decided to do it the ‘wrong’ way around via Cape Horn and created the British Steel Challenge in 1992/1993. This was followed by two BT Global Challenges in 1997/1997 and 2000/2001 and a Global Challenge in 2004/2005. These were sailed with 72ft steel boats. Some were bought at the end of the race by a charity, which I am a member of (Ocean Youth Trust Scotland) that takes kids out sailing.
In the meantime, Sir Robin Knox-Johnston used the same ‘amateur’ concept to set up a race going the ‘right’ way round and avoiding (via the Panama Canal) the dangerous Cape Horn. The first race occurred in 1996 and happened every 2 years, skipping 2004 while the 60ft boats were retired and replaced by the new 68ft boats, the series restarting in 2005.
Clipper 68
Source : Clipper Round the World Race
The next edition is the Clipper 09-10 Race in which I am participating and which will go around the world in 7 stages that will includes stop-overs in the UK – France – Brazil – South Africa – Australia – Singapore – China – California – Panama – Caribbean – New York – Canada – Ireland – UK and take 10 months to complete.
Clipper Round the World Yacht Race – What is it about?
Clipper offers the opportunity for non professional sailors to compete in a round the world yacht race. The race goes round the Cape of Good Hope and sails through the Indian Ocean. It is the only crewed race to visit Australia and transit the Panama Canal. The crews will all be taking on the elements, including the icy conditions of the North Pacific, the energy sapping heat of the tropics, the mountainous seas of the Southern Ocean and the frustrating calms of the Doldrums.
The crews are made of a wide range of people and it is the only place where you will find vicars racing against weather girls, farmers against teachers, doctors against students, housewives against chief execs. There are people from all walks of life, all ages, all social backgrounds, all countries joined in one common goal: to achieve something fantastic and memorable.
This race is the challenge of a lifetime, the opportunity to pit one’s wits against the elements, the oceans and all that they can throw at you.
The leg of the race in which I am competing will start from Hull and Humber on the 13th of September and will last 5 to 6 weeks, wind dependent, with an ETA in Rio 16th-18th of October.
Clipper Round the World Yacht Race – Why do I want to go?
I am originally from La Rochelle, a town on the west coast of France which is well known for sailing as it has one of the biggest marinas in Europe. I have been dinghy sailing for quite some time and some of you may be aware of my winter ‘boat shed’. I enjoy everything related to the sea from its food (oysters and winkles) to the adventure opportunities that it offers (surfing trips and dinghy cruising). I like the fact that at sea there are no grey areas and that you have to respect it as it will not give you a second chance.
As a youth in La Rochelle, I have witnessed several departures of cross-ocean races such as La Rochelle – New Orleans, USA and I always fancied the experience of one of this long haul sail despite the fact that I have never been on a keel boat. The Clipper Race is offering me this opportunity, without the need to own a boat and within a very safe environment. The world of sailing is actually full of people that own boats but go nowhere.
Clipper Round the World Yacht Race – What I am looking for out of it?
From a sailing point of view I should come back a better sailor, but more importantly I should experience a wide range of sailing conditions (this is why I chose leg 1) from the tidal Channel to the stormy Bay of Biscay through the windless Doldrums and the surfing trade winds.
From a human point, it should be a challenging and memorable experience considering that for 4 to 5 weeks I will be part of a 18 people team living 24 hours a day in 300 ft2 (only one shower a week allowed, water is precious at sea!), sleep deprived (4 hours on – 4 hours off, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week) and under the pressure of racing a 68ft boat.
Clipper Round the World Yacht Race – How is it going so far?
The first training week was in September and it was on the original clipper, the 60 ft version. As mentioned before, no previous experience of sailing is required, and in my crew that week some people joined that had never stepped on a sailing boat before. So the idea of the week is to provide as close an experience as possible to what the race is going to feel like.
The first few days are spent with the crew learning the basics of safety and boat handling, returning to the harbour at night. This includes sail and winch handling as well as man overboard and recovery drills.
For the remaining of the week, a long passage is planned and shifts are set up for the boat to sail 24 hours a day. This includes shift work (to make it harder we were 3 hours on – 3 hours off during the night as this breaks your sleep pattern and 12 hours on during the day), being the mother shift (the shift responsible for engineering, cooking and cleaning on the day), night sailing (in my case it included serious sea sickness) and prevention of collision at sea when crossing the Channel.
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Clipper 60 – training boat |
Inside |
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Pass the ‘Needles’ (Isle of Wight) |
Stop-over on Sark |
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My second week training was in February and luckily it was two weeks after the snow storms. Some people actually trained those weeks. Whereas the first week aimed at giving the crew a taste of what it will be, including shifts and night sailing, the second week was about setting the sails right and optimising their performance. This is where your luck with the weather you have on the training week matters. For the crews the week before, they had so much wind that they could not put all their sails up, especially the spinnaker, the big balloon sail at the front of the boat, whereas in our case we had so little wind that we had to reverse using the engine to fill the spinnaker with air. Due to the lack of wind we practiced other exercise like man overboard recovery, climbing the mast, climbing the boom,… The week overall was a lot easier as we came back in harbour every night for a good night sleep and we did not operate shifts.
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Clipper 68 – race boat (unbranded) |
This is as tidy as it gets. |
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End of the boom to fix the reefing lines |
Off Cowes on the way to port |
In April I had my third week training. It included Sea Survival, First Aid at Sea and Navigation Theory. Sea Survival training makes you realise that you do not abandon your boat unless you are 100% sure it will sink. Getting in and trying to survive in one of the rescue rafts is very difficult. And we were practicing this in a nice, calm, heated swimming pool, not in a sea with 2m waves at 10ºC. The idea of staying with your boat as long as you can and only stepping up rather than stepping down to a rescue raft came from one of the most lethal Fastnet Race in history in1979. 14 boats were abandoned during the race but only 5 actually sunk, the 9 others were recovered floating and empty. Most of the people that abandoned their boats actually perished in the storm. First Aid at Sea is a similar concept to First Aid at Work except for few differences, you are not working on a stable platform and you have very little room to move the casualty as the deck is usually clattered with equipment providing limited lying space. The Navigation theory was the hardest course as it was made of 7 days classroom theory plus homework at night and 3 exams during the week.
My next training week is in July when all 10 boats will race each other around the Channel and when we will also practice other safety drills such as transfers boat to boat of people, food, fuel,…
I will let you know how I got on.
Clipper Round the World Yacht Race – what to take with me ?
As this is a race, the weight of the boat is key factor as the heavier the boat, the slower you go. The crew has therefore been limited to 20kg each. When one considers that it includes your sailing boots and heavy foul weather gear, there is not a lot left for the rest. Whilst sailing, as with any other outdoor sports, a layering system is used to keep as cool and dry as possible. This system consists of a base layer designed to take perspiration away from the body and keep it dry, mid layer designed to keep the body warm and the outer layer designed to keep the water out and keep dry.
In the leg I am doing, this layering system and the number of layers I wear will be put through their paces as I will sail from areas where storm and low temperature can be expected (Channel, Bay of Biscay) to very hot areas (equator, doldrums). More importantly in the hot areas as well as protection against heat, I will need protection against UVs, especially around the equator where UV exposure is at its highest due to the closeness to the sun. To protect myself I will have hats, suncream, UPF50+ rated clothes and sunglasses.
For my sunglasses I have selected a Polaroid Eyewear large wrap around design with a Cat.3 brown lens similar to the models shown below.
Torrent Rave
The reasons I have selected this model are:
- UV protection: the large frame combined with the UV400 lens which provides 100% UV protection up to 400nm, offer me optimum protection. This is primordial at sea when one is exposed not only to the sun from above but also from the light reflected of the sea from below which the hat does not protect against.
- Cat.3 Brown lens: As a cat.3 lens it will take out the very high level of brightness encountered in these areas. As a brown lens it will provide sharp contrasts even under harsh glare as sky muted as the lens absorbs blue light extremely well. It also makes the lens great for protection against the effects of blue light on the eye. This colour also emphasizes the white hull and sails of the other boats that we will be sailing against.
- 100% polarisation efficiency: this is key when sailing as the sea generates very high levels of glare and therefore distorts the vision significantly. Removing this glare improves not only the overall field of vision but also diminishes eye fatigue, another key factor in long haul ocean racing. As advised by Zoe Williamson, a member of staff at Clipper who circumnavigated on a previous edition of the race, Zoe says,‘My only recommendation would be to get polarised lenses which reduce the glare created by the sun’s reflection on the water’.
Clipper Round the World Yacht Race – what stage is it at ?
The last weekend of May was the crew allocation weekend. This occasion was where the crews were allocated to a given boat and professional skipper. The boat I am on does not currently have an official sponsor so is still called CV1. However, we have been told that a sponsor is about to come onboard and an announcement will hopefully be made shortly.. I missed the weekend as I was on an induction trip (from Oban to Fort William) with Ocean Youth Trust Scotland, a charity which I am supporting and that takes kids of any background at sea on boats similar to the Clipper 68 I will be racing on (http://www.oytscotland.org.uk/) .
An addition to the Clipper Race website at the start of the race is a race viewer. If interested, you will be able to follow the race every day with the boat location displayed continuously. You will be able to race in a virtual manner by registering as a virtual competitor in an online Clipper Race game.