Jersey Clipper

The crew enjoyed the final party in the Pan American Club in Liverpool's Albert Dock on Saturday evening, with many of the past leggers there to join in with the round the worlders and leg 7 crew.  There, and in Jersey the week before, it has been really great to catch up with the team members who were on board for the early parts of the race and have already had a good few months back in "civilian" life!

 

Jersey Clipper left the Albert Dock mid afternoon on Monday bound for Jersey for a final weekend visit.  Most of the Jersey Clipper crew have dispersed back to their homes around the UK to start their return to normality but a number of keen crewmembers deciding to stay aboard for one more week to complete this "lap of honour". They spent Wednesday evening in Dartmouth and arrived in St. Helier on Thursday evening.

 

A steady stream of members of the public visited the boat on Saturday including a few people who are interested in taking part in the next Clipper Round The World Race which begins in September 2007.  Any potential crew members should take a look at the Clipper Ventures web site for more details.

 

Jersey Clipper slips her lines at 1400 today for the short hop to her home port of Gosport in Hampshire where she will be refitted in preparation for the next race.

2130 hrs

Winds have generally been very light since leaving Jersey, with most of the fleet still in sight of each other playing a large game of cat and mouse and although we are towards the back, its still all to play for.

However, from about 2.30 pm today the wind has started to fill in and boat speed has improved - albeit with the wind from the Northwest we have had to tack back and forth to make progress towards Land's End.  At the time of writing we are about 40 miles East of the waypoint off Land's End where we will be able to set a more Northerly course into the Irish Sea.

The mood on board seems to be strangely subdued. It is not clear whether this is because everyone thoroughly enjoyed the stopover in Jersey or because we all know that this great adventure is very nearly at an end.

Then again, maybe the cream cheese and smoked salmon bagels we served for lunch were just too much of a shock for everyone!

 

Over these last few days there will obviously be a number of "this is the last time" calls and here we are doing our last motherwatch duties ever - although, who knows, as I gather Sandra has been taking a worrying interest in Simon's new found cullinary skills.

 

So this also means our last diary where we would like to thank all our friends and family who have steadfastly stuck by us over the months. We know you enjoy the web site and we are grateful for your support and all the messages posted in the guestbook.

 

Looking forward to seeing you all in Liverpool.

 

Best wishes

 

Simon and Malcolm

Nothing much to report today, we are all slightly merry after another clock change and social soiree (we are definitively started to get the hang of these!).

 

Great news on the last scheds, it looks like we are finally starting to gain on Glasgow, but variable winds are still predicted so it is no time to get complacent.

 

The generator keeps dying every 5 minutes, not much news there, Shane is still trying to interview us at inopportune moments, and the sunscreen are coming out on deck again! Now it has been noted than one crew member (who shant be named) has decided to stray from the staple boat factor 30 and has his own stash of factor 6 Hawaiian Tropic frying oil and came up with the dubious excuse that the smell reminded him of teenage holidays  hum methinks that somebody is trying to catch up on his tan.

 

We have all had the pleasure of having hot showers in the past few days thanks to Bernies magical mending skills the freshwater pump is actually working for the first time since I have been on this boat, and short of a nice fluffy bed, a warm shower was a rather nice luxury.

 

We are now about 120 miles away from the finish line, so close yet so far.

Tension is building.

 

After a run of excellent schedules, we hit the slow stuff last night. For a time it looked like we were going to be blessed as we were managing 6 knots exactly where the GRIB files said that any type of movement was improbable, if not against the laws of physics. But it didn’t last.

Everything got very moody. Thunder growled in the distance, lightning flashed and the air hung heavy on the sails.  The lemons appeared on the speedo.

 

We eased sails, dropped sails, raised sails, manually tacked the boat at any sign of a breeze from a new quarter, tacked back again 5 minutes later, and then we resorted to prayer.

 

Eventually it came, dragging us from the stale air under the storm. For a time, the skies cleared to show the stars and we ghosted along at 6 knots with eerie phosphorescence lighting the hull.

 

This has been a familiar story to both watches for the last 24hrs now. With daylight and the threat of following breeze, the spinnakers have been up and down whilst the wind has continued to dance wither shins around the compass, keeping us guessing. Right now we have breeze and we are going in the right direction at a respectable lick, desperate to make up the losses on the last sched, desperate to reel in Glasgow, as many others as possible, but must get Glasgow.

 

The shortening of the course has left a few mixed feelings but mainly ambivalence. It appears not to favour or disfavour anyone and so seems inconsequential. Anyhow, who will ever know what changes of fortune tides and inter-island jockeying would have brought. Head down for the new line and no losing focus.

 

Thoughts of family and friends are creeping in to the conversations and everyone is looking forward to a cold beer and personal time with loved ones. We’ll be there as soon as we can, that’s for sure.

 

Rob and Peter

Hi there, avid Jersey web watchers.

We seem to have been stuck in gloomy conditions for the past few days but today a number of things transpired to make it an altogether better day. We had a few things to celebrate.

Firstly, congratulations to Marcus (Mr Ludewig for those of you who didn’t know) who celebrated being thirty something today and was presented with a chart of the North Atlantic marking our route and position and signed by all the crew.

 

For those patient supporters you will see that Jersey climbed up the leader board to seventh position after a series of good daily runs and a top run for the last 12 hours of 129 miles. We are now well positioned for the run in towards the Channel and are determined to keep the pace going.

 

Whilst you have been baking in sunny weather we have been stuck in “clag” reminiscent of the Grand Banks so it was a welcome change today to see some sky which by the end of the day had cleared to a lovely blue and we saw the sunset for the first time in quite a few days.

 

As many of you will be aware our skipper, Mervyn, is an ex Royal Marine so you would quite rightly expect that discipline on board should be exemplary and so today we had an inspection. One by one, in full racing uniform we filed on deck and took up positions on the windward rail. We all then came to attention very smartly whilst Mervyn carried out the inspection. Some were unshaven, some wore sandals and others did not appear to have the right shine on their boots. This will not do, and improvements have to be made otherwise some of us may not be allowed ashore in Jersey. The inspection was filmed by Shane, our resident cameraman, so the evidence is there. Alas we are a rabble!

 

Last but not least we advanced the clocks one hour which is excellent news because it means we now have a local time one hour closer to Jersey time and in fact we are only two hours behind and that has to be something to celebrate.

 

As is customary on these occasions with so much to cheer about we had a little cocktail party this afternoon and so ended another memorable day on Jersey Clipper.

 

See you soon

Malcolm and Kate

More boisterous weather today, to use Mervyn’s words to describe the rather hefty winds that have been with us since yesterday, which are rather welcome as the are pushing us towards Jersey at our highest consistent speed so far.

 

“Frankenmain” is still up and proud, but due to a small defect in bolting design, as we hadn’t taken the bolted battens all the way to the mast, started to develop a small transversal tear. Given the small size of the tear, and the fact that we had 3 reefs in due to the wind anyway, it was decided not to take the main down again but to send up an aerobatic repair team composed of our two drilling and bolting experts Bernie and RJ.

 

As this rather impressive aerial repair job was all filmed by Shane, - RJ and Bernie looked pretty Mission Impossiblesque, laden with tools and drills hanging by the mast - a few late newcomers on deck jokingly expressed their doubts as to whether this was more motivated by the need to repair the tear or to film RJ playing drilling Spiderman on the sail, especially as the repair job was so good you could hardly tell where the new battens or indeed the tear was!

 

After the grim rain and wetness of yesterday, the sun made a few appearances today so even though this was still dry suit weather – yes who said “you’ll never need it crossing the Atlantic ocean, especially in summer!!” - , the ocean looked spectacular and it certainly made life a bit more pleasant for the watches on deck.

 

As I write this evening we are exactly 1175 miles from Jersey so not far from the last 1000, and we are definitely doing our best to get there as fast as possible!

 

Héloïse and Brent

Jersey Clipper is trucking along nicely again this evening as the winds at their location build to around 30 knots.  This wind should last the weekend being replaced with lighter winds again on Monday, but it seems the fleet should have some wind all the way to Jersey.

 

The weather chart below shows the wind situation on Saturday morning.  The Jersey boat is in the windiest red patch where the winds should be over 30 knots, hopefully giving Jersey a temporary advantage.

 

Hopefully everyone who is planning to be at the Jersey stopover has bought their event tickets - sales close on Sunday night!

Today began abruptly.  Very abruptly.  At about 3.30 am there was a huge commotion on deck and a call down below for assistance.  Now, for those about to begin a long day on mother watch we are normally excused from responding to these all hands on deck requests and so I somewhat guiltily pulled the top of my sleeping bag up a bit and rolled over.  It was not to be.  In the scramble to put on boots, foulies and lifejackets in the half light of a wildly pitching and rolling forward bunk area, our on-board cameraman Shane, somehow (and I'm still not clear on the precise explanation) managed to release the adjustable cord used to hold my bunk
at an angle.  With this, one side of my bunk immediately dropped about two and a half feet leaving me both confused and clinging to the lee cloth as Shane began to babble his apologies.

 

The reason we had been called was that without any warning at all the mainsail had ripped almost from leech to luff about two thirds of the way up.  This is especially annoying because

(a) the weather conditions were not particularly bad and

(b) the sail was supposed to have been repaired in Victoria when this happened last time in the North Pacific. 

 

Well at least we knew what to do, and the crew set about drilling and sawing and stitching and bolting so that by 5.00pm today we had our Frankenstein mainsail back in action with batons and bolts holding the critical pieces together.   But another day when we couldnt go as fast as we would have liked, resorting as we did to the storm sail as a stand-in while the necessary repairs were made.  Looking at the scheds earlier today, things could have been a lot worse all things considered but we remain frustrated that we so far have not begun to claw back some of the miles lost when we had our spinny spills earlier in the week.

 

So for Mark and I today has meant endless teas and coffees for the workers and then joining in for the final hoist and trim once all was done.  At least we got to serve up some of RJs grans fruit cake after supper which went down very well with everyone.  Thanks RJs gran!

 

A long day for all so its off to bed now and a double tied bunk cord for me, just in case.

 

 

Episode II: What on earth is going on? or Que pasa ahora?

 

After the spinnaker related carnage of 48hrs ago the intrepid crew of Jersey thought that with the clearing of the Grand Banks they had seen off their troubles for the time being and had been making good progress against much of the fleet. Alas it was not to be as in the early hours of this morning it appeared that the malevolent Mexican swordsman in black had made a brief appearance to strike a blow at the very heart of race operations.

 

The beleaguered and somewhat bemused crew could only watch in disbelief as the fateful sound of parting sailcloth once again reverberated across the deck and before their very eyes the mainsail once again fell apart from leach to luff at the seams to reveal a fresh Z shaped wound up between the second and third spreaders. Experiencing a certain sense of Déjà vu, the crew sprang into action and, failing to apprehend the elusive sabre bearing bandit, dropped the mainsail. Upon closer inspection it quickly became obvious that this was in fact not the work of any mysterious masked marauder but simply another case of disintegrating mainsail stitching.

 

Wear and tear is inevitable. However, you would be forgiven for thinking that the mainsail, having been taken away for repair and full inspection in Victoria, should probably have withstood the forces of a 20 knot breeze. Emotions ranging from disbelief and frustration to anger and bemusement have quickly given way to the practicalities of getting the repair underway. This time the fix will be a slight evolution from the previous one although it also involves bolting the seam together (though this time using our temporary batten strengtheners as flexible backing plates) and there is the sound of drilling going on as we speak.

 

Both our new skipper and Shane, our imbed new technologist moving picture recorder man were both seen to be shaking their heads in disbelief and heading for their bunks as they were handed their official inauguration into the Jersey Salvage Squad. Being higher up the sail there is less damage than in the North Pacific so we are hopeful of a quicker repair. Then it took 48hrs of round the clock work and were hoping to at least
halve that this time. We are under way of sorts, sporting our favourite Y5 all purpose Genoa and storm sail and even heading in vaguely the right direction. We are however bracing ourselves for possibly the shortest stopover in history in our home port. Oh the joy of it!

 

That is about it from this particular episode for now, tune in later as witness how the lack of a re-stitch in time has cost us nine. To all you back there, from all of us out here in the North Atlantic, a fond farewell.

 

Dream the dream
Live the reality

 

Marcus

Greetings form the Grand Banks. Truth be told we have just left the Banks and are south of Flemish Cap. Sadly for those fans of the film “The Perfect Storm” George Clooney has failed to materialise – a girl can dream! Mind you we did see some remarkable reflective fishing buoys that reminded us of a string of lights dancing along a promenade.

 

We have been trucking along nicely today. The wind has been around 17 knots for most of the day and the sea state slight. Visibility has been a bit of a joke. Typical Grand Banks “Clag” as Merv put it just about sums it up. Mind you it has been bright for most of the day – so bright that Mark donned yellow sunglasses that were more Ali G than Oakley. This caused much amusement with his watch and there were all sorts of references to Staines which seemed to lift the heaviness of the fog somewhat.

 

It felt good flying our bionic medium weight and taking miles out of our immediate competitors. We have been romping indeed – averaging 10 to 11 knots over the ground for most of the day.

 

Now I know that we should never tire of our surroundings, but we have reached the stage of near complacency, which we assume is down to the fog. Having had legs when there was little to see at all, we seem to have become a magnet for large pods of sleepy whales and wall to wall dolphins. The dolphins are always great fun, you never know what they will do next as they play in our bow wave. But the whales are a different matter as we keep having to bear away to avoid them. It will be a tall story at a bar “We didn’t do as well as anticipated principly because we had to keep bearing away from whales” well, it might be worth a Gin and Tonic or two!!

 

It might not be a drama to many, but it was not Malcolm’s day today. Apart from being on mother watch with yours truly – enough to weaken even the strongest morale – he managed to be the unlucky one in the shower when the water pump failed. Now, Malcs is one of the more cool characters on board – so watching him dance from the heads, with freshly lathered hair, to retrieve some cold water was a site for sore eyes!

 

We are nearly halfway to Jersey, which is a good thought to end on. We are all looking forward to bringing Jersey home. It would have been truly excellent if we had pulled off a podium place – however this is looking increasingly more unlikely. Still we are giving it our best and remain determined to move up the fleet as we near home.

Malcolm and Kate