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Paul Knighton Blog (MSc Insurance and Risk Management, 2007)

Paul is taking a career break to compete in The Clipper Round the World yacht race and here is his third blog entry!

Entry 3 - Race 3: Rio to Cape Town

The start line in Rio was as usual a frantic affair of tacking and gybing for position. the difference this time was that the start line was only 100m wide which meant that squeezing 10 yachts through was going to be a challenge, and so it proved.

As VF edged ever closer to the line we emerged as the lead boat and also the most windward boat. Racing rules state that the most windward boat (windward being the boat that is closest to the direction from which the wind is blowing) must give way to any other yachts. Therefore although we had the lead this was not a good position for us. As the line came closer and the squeeze got tighter the rest of the fleet was jockeying for position and amid shouts of "bear away" and "give me room" suddenly there was contact between New York and Singapore, no doubt a rather nervy moment for the crews and skippers. lucky the contact was light and we all continued for the line. unfortunately for us, as the windward boat we found ourselves once again having the tack away at the last moment, losing momentum as the rest of the fleet powered by, another bad start! we were now in last place apart from the Welcome to Yorkshire entry which had to return to the marina because of a medical emergency.
this was a position we were becoming used to following our starts in Cowes and Madeira, but we knew we had plenty of time to make up ground.

By the time we were loosing sight of land and Sugar Loaf Mountain was fading over the horizon we had clawed our way from 9th to 5th position thanks to some efficient sail changes and good navigation from the skipper. The race proper was now on and we settled down for the 3000 miles to Africa.

The crew had been racing together since we left the UK in July and were now experienced sailors, and it showed as our evolutions became ever smoother and our ability to anticipate changes in conditions improved. As we headed south seeking the south Atlantic trade winds we found ourselves in strong north westerlies which provided us with the shove that we needed to get the first 1000 miles under our belt and gain us another place up to 4th.

as we were heading west to east and the wind direction is predominately westerly at that latitude this means that we were able to maintain out strongest point of sail, a “broad reach”. a board reach enables us to use our wardrobe of spinnaker sails. these are the largest sails and we carry and we have three on board the lightweight, mediumweight and heavyweight.
Some days into this gibe we were in approximately 25 kts of wind and were using our mediumweight. As the wind increased the decision was made to change the heaveyweight for a smaller sail, unfortunately as we begin the change there was a sudden wind shift and the sail collapsed, the light spinnaker fabric warped itself around the fore stays and as the wind increased the wrap became more severe to the point where the strain on the sail and fore stay was so much that the cabling that is the fore stay became bent and twisted and the spinnaker began to rip. What a disaster, and the disaster became worse when rather than the rip easing tension, it simply freed more of the spinnaker to become more tangled.
After about 20 minutes or so the
sail had all but been destroyed and was ripped in to several pieces only loosely connected and thoroughly tangled. Finally the decision was made to send someone up the mast to try and reach the fore stays and cut away the spinnaker. This decision was very much a last resort as it all but guaranteed that we would irreparably damage the spinnaker for the rest of the race, but it would at lest mean we would continue sailing. after seven hours of hacking away the fore stays were finally free, the heavyweight was in taters but we were again sailing.

Much of the rest of the leg was spent with volunteers taking it in rotation to try and sew back the shreds of the spinnaker, we knew it would take a age to repair, but one thing you have a lot of in an ocean race is time.

Despite our misfortune the race was going well, we were able to make back up the time we had lost battling with the spinnaker and we were rapidly moving up the leader board. Strong winds had seen us take third and we were only a few miles behind the leader. As we edged within 1000 miles of the African coast we were fighting with the Dutch entry DLL for second position. this battle was to last us the full 1000 miles and was not finally settled until Cape Town.

We made an early break and secured a 50 mile lead over DLL, as we edged closer to the finish DLL were constantly eking away at our advantage. As Table Mountain emerged from the haze on the final day we knew they were only 6 miles behind, but we also knew we were in good winds and sailing well and felt confident second was in the bag. unfortunately when sailing, the race isn’t over till it’s over and as we turned around the Cape of Good Hope and the finish line emerged only 6 miles into the distance, like a light bulb the wind switched off from a steady 20kts to zero. we stopped dead in the water and in fact began to go backward with the current. all the time DLL were catching. this was a crewel blow so close to the Finnish and crew moral sank. we frantically changed sails in an attempted to get the boat moving, but nothing seemed to work, as he crew sat on the low side rail legs dangling over the side in an attempt to gain some forward momentum a sinister feeling arose, had we lost what we had fought so hard for at the last second? this feeing was compounded when the sight of sharks dorsal fin circling the boat lead to a sharp up-pulling of legs. as soon as we entered wind hole we had turned off our AIS system. this transmits a signal unique to our yacht and identifies us to all vessels within a certain range. it also tells other vessels our direction of travel and speed. by turning this off we hoped that DLL would not see that we had stopped and fall into the same wind hole. It was a nervy wait but as we watched our navigation system and could still see DLL's AIS was transmitting and they had not changed their course, we hopped they had not seen our fate.

It took us seven hours to travel six miles that afternoon and as we limped across the finish line and turned on our engine to motor into the marina we could see that DLL had indeed not see us stop and had followed us into the wind hole, I understand that took them 12 hours to negotiate the same six miles of water.

a great race, another second place, time to get on with repairing that spinnaker.

next stop Geraldton Western Australia.