clipper race recap

“We were racing along in 40- to 60-knot gusts,” said skipper Juan Coetzer. “The sea was alive with rage. We were making good speed, sailing with the third reef in the main, surfi ng at 15 to 20 knots. Then at our watch change, just before the sun came up, a monstrous

“Yee-haw! We’re having some fun now!” ‘New York’s crew rides the rail on the blustery approach to the Golden Gate.

foaming swell broke over our stern. Mark Burkes was on the helm at the time. The water had so much force in it that it pushed Mark into the helm, snapping the pedestal clean off. We had no steering and crew were falling all over the boat.” On March 31 the Ed Dubois-designed Clipper 68 Geraldton Western Australia was roughly 400 nm west of San Francisco, tracking south to avoid the worst of a nasty North Pacifi c storm. Geraldton was one of ten identical 68-ft cutters racing in the Qingdao, China, to San

Dousing and stowing the main aboard ‘Geraldton Western Australia’ is a group project. During the storm its third reef blew out.

Francisco Bay leg of the Clipper Round the World Race — a rhumbline distance of nearly 6,000 miles. “We heard an almighty roar,” said Burkes. “Next thing I knew I was underwater — it felt like 40 minutes, but was probably 20 to 40 seconds. We were all clipped in — we double-clipped. Everyone was thrown around at the end of their lines, but no one was lost overboard. It’s drummed into us — you do not unclip in those conditions.” “Quickly we got the emergency steering in place,” said Coetzer. “Then the third reef blew, so the storm jib went up and we pulled down the remains of our mainsail, tidied up the boat and treated the wounded.” Burkes suffered from lower back whiplash, but was soon taken off the casualty list. More seriously hurt were fellow Brits Jane Hitchens, 50, and Nik Brbora, 29, who’d been preparing to go off watch when the wave hit. It was later determined that Hitchens, a doctor, had broken ribs, a cracked vertebra, and a ruptured spleen, and that Brbora, a software engineer, had a pelvic sprain. In addition, a fourth crewman, Australian Max Wilson, suffered minor injuries. An Air National Guard parajumper team was dispatched aboard a Coast Guard HC-130 to render assistance, but upon arrival at the scene conditions were too severe to deploy parachutes. They did, however, drop medical supplies, and the Cutter Bertholf was diverted to pick up the injured crew members.

Billed as the world’s longest yacht race, the Clipper Race’s 40,000mile route, starting and finishing at Southampton, UK, takes 11 months to complete. Skippers are hired by Clipper Ventures to sail the yachts, but the crews are made up of amateur sailors who pay to sail. (Roughly $63,000 for the whole trip, or $12,000 - $14,000 per leg, including extensive pre-departure training.) The Race is the brainchild of Clipper Ventures chairman Sir Robin Knox-Johnston, the first person to sail around the world alone nonstop. On March 30, Gold Coast Australia was the first of the fl eet to sail beneath the Golden Gate Bridge and on to the leg’s fi nish line off the Golden Gate Yacht Club. Although she was leading the next boat, Singapore, by 100 nm, Gold Coast’s skipper Richard Hewson had the crew hoist the spinnaker. “Finish as though we have another boat alongside us,” he said. The fl eet’s home base during their stay on the Bay was at Oakland’s Jack London Square. In advance of their arrival, each boat was adopted by a local marine organization, so that no matter what hour of the day or night they arrived — rain or shine — each crew received a jubilant welcome from wellwishers ashore. Geraldton was the last to arrive, April 3, but its battered crew probably received the most heartfelt welcome of all. A week later, the fl eet was a key attraction at the annual Strictly Sail Pacifi c boat show, and they received a boisterous send-off April 14 when they departed the docks for the starting line of Leg Seven, to New York, via the Panama Canal.

Lisa Perkin of San Francisco sailed aboard New York, which fi nished the brutal North Pacifi c leg in third place. (Each boat bears the name of a city or region which sponsors it to promote

CLIPPER ROUND THE WORLD YACHT RACE

As ‘Derry-Londonderry’ crew members emerge from below decks they must clip in — an unbreakable rule in such conditions.

tourism.) Although not a full ‘Roundthe-Worlder’, as roughly half the crews are, Perkin chose to sail in three legs of the race: Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, to Cape Town, South Africa (Leg 2), Gold Coast, Australia, to Qingdao via Batam, Indonesia, and Singapore (Leg 5), and the North Pacifi c crossing (Leg 6). The adventurous and athletic 42-yearold wine sales consultant got interested when her friend Shana Bagley raced in the previous edition. “I went aboard the boats at the Golden Gate Yacht Club and talked to the crews, who said, ‘How can you not want to do something like this?’ I asked myself, ‘Why put it off?’ I signed up and then thought, ‘What did I do?’” Like all of the crew, Perkin started with the mandatory six weeks of training in the UK. Then in September came her “warm-up” leg, as she called it. “Rio was the fi rst major stopover for the boats. One of our crew, Fabio Peixoto, was from Rio, and that helped with the personal touch. It was a very relaxed feeling there. I met Sir Robin and chatted with him for an hour and a half. I picked his brain about the leg. said that the fi rst and last legs, and the Southern Ocean leg sell out most quickly. “Everyone wants to do the Southern Ocean.” Perkin rejoined the race for Leg 5 in mid-December in warm, sunny Gold Coast, on Australia’s east coast. The

“Everyone wants to do the Southern Ocean.”

leg started the day before Christmas. “We went through areas the race hadn’t been to before because an added stop in Tauranga, New Zealand, changed the route. This leg has the most variety.” It departs during the Southern Hemisphere’s summer, sails to the tropics, crosses the equator, makes a pit stop at Nongsa Point Marina on Batam Island before a major stop at Singapore, and fi nishes at Qingdao — where it was 10°F and snowing.

“At the (pre-departure) briefi ng, we were told it would take 14 days to get to Cape Town, and that it would be downwind. We did fl y spinnakers, but not as much as they thought we would because of the back-to-back squalls we hit early on. We were in the thick of things in the middle of the course, but we sailed conservatively — points are deducted for damage. We have a budget of £500 ($800) for sail repair, and we have 11 sails onboard. We had no damage on that leg. We didn’t see the other boats until the last two days. Then it was a close fi nish — four boats within one hour.” Perkin didn’t do the Southern Ocean leg, but she thinks it was probably tougher than the Pacifi c crossing. “It was much colder, with squalls, heavy wind, damage and a lot of injuries.” At one point, New York broached and the helmsman was thrown into the steering pedestal’s stainless handrail, breaking it. “We use two spinnaker poles to jibe, and both of them broke in the Southern Ocean.” Race Director Joff Bailey After the fl eet departed China on March 4, a virus swept through the crews. “People were dropping like fl ies,” said Perkin, “getting sick and getting hurt.” Although each bunk is rigged with a lee cloth, falling out of bunks was a frequent cause of injury, and bruised or broken ribs were common. “We’re more scared when we’re down below, because we don’t know what’s going on. “Leg 6 was completely overcast,” she explained. “We broke stuff. We had lots of chafe in the lines. Things got wet and

‘Singapore’s decks were often awash with white water during Clipper ‘11-’12’s Leg 6 from China to San Francisco Bay.

stayed wet. And we were hit by a lot of rogue waves, mostly on the beam or bow.” Other boats faced similar challenges. As reported in April’s Racing Sheet, both Edinburgh Inspiring Capital and De Lage Landen had to divert toward Japan to medevac injured crew, and Singapore might have lost a crewman overboard had he not been tethered in. The steering cable aboard DerryLondonderry broke in gale conditions, but its crew was somehow able to replace it. Two weeks into the crossing, Perkin was on the midnight watch, heading toward the helm: “A big wave hit me and slammed me into the side of the companionway (the hatch was closed). It was just a muscle injury, no cracked ribs. I took my turn at the helm, but it really hurt. “The fi nish at the Golden Gate Bridge was a huge high point and one of the motivations for doing this leg. We were

A moment that made the harsh North Pacifi c crossing worthwhile: Lisa Perkin drives ‘New York’ under the Golden Gate Bridge.

ahead of Derry-Londonderry for three to four days. We had to continuously keep our speed up, constantly trimming. Twelve hours before San Francisco, we raised the staysail — but it had a rip in a seam, so we took it down and repaired it on deck, with waves breaking over us. It took 45 minutes and we hoisted it again. At the next six-hour check-in we learned that we’d only given up six miles COURTESY LISA PERKIN to Derry. “On the last day, I saw the Farallon Islands and the boats in the Doublehanded Farallones race. I could see the bridge from about six miles out. It was a great fi nish, and we received a wonderful greeting at the docks.” Perkin is an alumna of Club Nautique, which provided New York’s welcoming committee. “We had a lot of apprehension, but it was a relatively safe crossing. We saw 50-ft waves. The wind built from 30 to 40 to 50 knots. I’m glad I did it.”

Do you have what it takes to crew on a Clipper Race? If so, be aware that the ‘13-’14 edition — to be sailed in brand new 70-footers — is fi lling up fast. “We want people who are interesting but not crazy,” said recruiter David Cusworth. “Sometimes it’s a fi ne line.” (For info, see www.clipperroundtheworld. com.)

— latitude/chris

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