Lack of breeze forces Clipper race restart
Within a few hours of the start of Race 11 from Jamaica to New York yesterday, the fleet stopped racing and began heading towards a rendezvous point in the Windward Passage, midway between the islands of Haiti and Cuba, some 200 nautical miles from the start line at Port Antonio.
'The view from westernaustralia2011.com as the fleet lines up for the restart - Clipper 07-08'
Clipper
Ventures Plc ©
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The decision was taken because the weather forecast for today and the next week shows little or no wind for this initial stage of the race. To prevent the teams wallowing around for several days making no progress and the race becoming a lottery the Race Director decided to restart the race today north of the Windward Passage.
Joff Bailey, Clipper 07-08 Race Director, said, 'The conditions that the crew will experience over the initial part of the race will be similar to the Doldrums. Unfortunately, unlike the Doldrums which move around, this area of light winds is very static at the moment and we could not see when, if at all, the light and even no wind would be replaced with more steady pressure that would allow fair racing.
'During the skipper and crew briefings all the teams were informed that this would be a likely possibility and Simon Bradley, the lead skipper at the moment, made the final decision after talking to me a couple of hours after the race start yesterday. The effort put in by the teams during the start was still recognised as the positions around the first turning mark were used as the start order for the Le Mans start today.'
westernaustralia2011.com's skipper, Martin Silk, admits the start of Race 11 '.could have gone better. With some good tacks and bad tacks we ended up with an override on a winch trying to get to the windward mark in frustration.' The yacht hove to, allowing Jamaica to round the mark ahead of them and leaving the WA entry to bring up the rear.
Jamaica's skipper, Simon Bradley, the lead skipper for Race 11, reported that a successful Le Mans start took place at 2211 GMT today, Sunday 25 May. It was slightly later than the fleet had planned. As they met at the rendezvous location Glasgow: Scotland with style Clipper's crew discovered they had fishing nets caught around their keel, propshaft and prop and had to send a diver down to untangle the mess.
Simon said, 'After Glasgow: Scotland with style Clipper had freed themselves from the fishing nets the fleet had got very close to the TSS off the eastern end of Cuba. The decision was taken to motor just north of the TSS to ensure the safety of the fleet as the wind angles at the time would have meant sailing straight towards the shipping lanes.
'Hull & Humber, New York and Uniquely Singapore all had very good starts, but as expected we're all very close together as we head towards New York approx 1200 nautical miles away. The wind is light from the northwest but boat speed is around the 8 knots mark.
'An interesting 24 hours is ahead of us as we negotiate our way through the Bahama Island chain into the open North Atlantic.'
The skippers used the downtime well and undertook some dry drills training with the crews who joined the yachts in Jamaica.
Ricky Chalmers, skipper of Durban 2010 and Beyond, reports, 'I did some training in the remainder of the wind, and we are letting the new guys do all the helming to brush up on their skills, especially at night.'
Marcus Cholerton-Brown on Qingdao has also been blowing away the cobwebs for the latest additions to his crew. He says, 'It was a real wrench to leave Jamaica, everybody had such a fantastic time and chilled out with the rum and good company. Then some great sailing yesterday afternoon. Just as we were thinking the wind would last all night we ran out of puff. Making good use of our time with some training.'
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Berths are now available for the Clipper 09-10 Round the World Yacht Race or more information on applying to become a crew member email oceanracer(at)clipperroundtheworld.com call the Crew Recruitment Manager on +44 (0) 2392 526000. The Clipper Race is open to anyone over the age of 18 and there is no upper age limit.
by Clipper event media 
Port Macquarie, NSW
