CLIPPER ROUND THE WORLD WEEKEND

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

CLIPPER ARRIVAL

The first Clipper Boat finished the race yesterday morning, but took nearly 24 hours to get through the straits and down the sound to Seattle.  Sailing at first, then motoring, the ‘Derry-Londonderry-Doire' pulled into Elliot bay shortly before 7am.  Unfortunately for the small group of un-informed supports (myself, another live aboard from D Dock, 2 relatives of one of the crew and a homeless fellow) the boats schedule didn’t call for it to be at the dock until an hour later.  And, close to precisely on schedule, it pulled into Bell Street harbor at 8:02am (0802 hours for the nautical sticklers).

By then a dozen or so people from Ireland had arrived, all dressed in purple, to wish their countrymen and women to their first port in over 4,000 nautical miles.  They sang happy birthday to one of the crew whose birthday happened to be today.

There was a small contingent on the dock on this cool morning and by the time the vessel had docked a few folks unaware of the race had stopped to look at the goings on.

Fun to watch the arrival....

UNSPRUNG

Each cruise has its own personality and within the cruise everyone aboard takes away something different.

Combine 4 boats, huge tidal exchanges, talented chefs, great weather and fantastic people then watch the magic happen.

We covered nearly 200 nautical miles and effectively circumnavigated the San Juans from Seattle over a long weekend.

I’ll let the pictures tell most of the story and not confine the narrative of the trip to a single voice.

Just after first light, already underway

The calm morning gave way to rougher seas.  The boat (and stomachs) were tossed.  

Well played strong currents expedited our trip.  We hit 12.4 knots, speed over ground, at one point in time

Iolani had Dalls Porpoises playing in her bow

 Will's home made spiced rum

 For generations, this recipe has been in Doug's family

My grandmother's waffle iron - in her family since the 1800's

Gray whales, while impressive, aren't very photogenic

A good trip