Friday and Saturday were spent in and around the Clipper Round the World boats and crews. You get the sense that these are ordinary people doing extraordinary things. With a British accent.
The crews pay a mount Everest like sum to circumnavigate and 8 to $15K per leg for those not going all the way around. We heard several stories of folks signing up for one leg only to get hooked and continuing on.
One young women’s mother quietly glowed at her daughter’s new and well founded confidence after being on several legs. She said her daughter was becoming a different person as a result of the race.
The videos show stunning footage of huge waves but what’s not captured is the teamwork and trust that the crews form as together they tackle the operations of the boats.
Ongoing sail changes, taking reefs in, shaking them out, hot bunking, on watch/off watch, it’s a grueling pace and only through good teamwork and good humor can they drive the boat over thousands of miles.
The boats themselves are pretty cool -- but not the state of the art machines we were expecting. There are several commercial considerations that temper the design of the boat. These boats have to get in and out of a wide spectrum of harbors and draft and mast height are considerations. Reliability and strength considerations tend to trump absolute 'go fast'. Higher tech boats are built with lighter, more expensive materials -- but while faster, are more tender and prone to breakage.
These boats are most impressive, but several of the high tech sailors were a little disappointed in how robust and heavily built these boats are.
Sir Robin
Shotski
Kristina chatting with John and Clodagh
The skyline
 |
| Out for a sail |
During a talk at CYC Friday night, the Clipper spokesperson described one of the races many goals was to turn out well rounded racers. Just about half of the race participants have no sailing experience. He described the many tasks on the boat - Bowman, Helm, Timmer, Navigator, Engineer, Sail Repair, Chef, and Meteorologist. In most boats, the sailor rotates through all these positions in order to learn all aspects of running the boat.
For a history of the race, here's an article
Sachem and Visit Seattle
Bill Buchan, aboard Sachem, was out and took a close look at Visit Seattle. I emailed Carl the pictures which he said he'd forward to his dad.
Visit Seattle opens the BNR bridge
Clodagh and Leigh
Embroidered into John's shirt
The pilothouse crew
 |
| Pocock shell on top. Defines "maintenance" |
 |
| One of the competitors Mom, John and Leigh |
No comments:
Post a Comment