Race 12 - Steph's Report

I hope you were as pleased as we were that Durban had a slightly better finish (7th) in the race from New York to Halifax although, yet again, we were plagued by light winds.
 
We left New York in thick fog.  One of the things that I was most looking forward to in the race was sailing past the Statue of Liberty.  As you'll recall, we sailed into New York in the very early hours (bad for photos) and when we sailed out, we couldn't even see the plinth, let alone Liberty herself.  Due to the light winds we motored out past Long Island and had another Le Mans start.  This time, the positions had been drawn out of a hat by the skippers before leaving New York.  Ricky had drawn tenth (our nickname in the fleet is now Durban Twenty Tenth and Behind...).  This is usually the worst position on the line but with the very light winds, this enabled us to bear away at the start and after the mandatory ten minutes in which you can't change your sail plan, we had our spinnaker up. Not that it did us much good.  What little breeze there was died and two boats (not including Durbs) ended up facing the wrong way as we all drifted about desperately trying to find the wind.
 
Eventually, we had a little bit of wind and then some more.  We had a couple of days of really fantastic sailing.  We're now in trousers, fleeces and oilies in the day time, and every piece of clothing we own at night.  Ricky changed the watches for race 12 - I ended up on Lucy's watch which is a great improvement as she is a great trainer and my helming is finally improving.  We've managed to inspire the rest of the crew to concentrate on all-out racing every second of the day and especially the night.  I've come to quite look forward to the 3am - 6am watch - there is something really special about being on deck at dawn.  We've been joined by dolphins, sharks and numerous whales.  Unfortunately, we hit a whale at night.  Our hull was damaged and I really hope we came off worst. It coincided with an improvement in our position in the fleet and the joke is that we had to pick up speed to get away from Greenpeace protesters!
 
Yet again, the race was shortened due to lack of wind and it wasn't until the final positions were emailed to the boat that we realised how we had done - the boats were all very close and it came down to the angles that each boat was sailing towards the gate.  We then had to motor sail to Halifax.
 
We arrived at the Royal Canadian Yacht Squadron (v posh!) at about 4am yesterday.  They had laid on a bbq and cold beers which were really appreciated, even at that uncivilised hour!  Sadly it was only a short stop at the RCYS as we were just using it as a muster point before the procession up the river into central Halifax.  We had a superb water bomb fight with Jamaica and Qingdao as we got into formation - I think we won but I can't be too sure!
 
The welcome in the city was been wonderful - Nova Scotia is immensly proud to be hosting the Clipper race.  After the prize giving (notable point - female mounties do NOT look good in the uniform!) we went to a complimentary Chowder Supper in which 3 local restaurants submitted their best Chowder recipes for us to judge.  And then the drinking began.  The party moved to a local brewery tap with live music and when that closed we moved on to another local venue with a great live band.  I have no idea what time I got into bed.  I just know that I had acquired a tattoo (not permanant, thank goodness!) and a hangover of epic proportions.
 
We've got a few more days here before we help Nova Scotia celebrate 250 years of democracy by doing a short race to Sydney.  The race doesn't count towards the overall points and I suspect that Nova Scotia Clipper will probably 'win'.

Comments

[David CSSA]

[this is good] Hi Steph

[David CSSA]

Hi Steph & all on board Durban 2010 & beyond.  Great to hear the news at such a distance.  Steph, we've just finshed our regatta in the Solent, you know the one where you started to get the bug for racing.  Now that you've joined the big guys  we are hoping that others will be inspired to follow in your wake!

Good luck & fair winds on the way home!

David