Farewells, fast sailing and a strong run to beautiful La Rochelle

So, after literally years in the making, 11 o'clock on Sunday 13th 2009 arrived. It was a moment I was looking forward to so so much, however saying goodbye to friends, family and my amazingly patient girlfriend Lisa was a the one thing about the whole experience I was not looking forward to. It may be a long time till I see some of them again, but we'll keep in touch and hopefully meet up somewhere along the way.

Hull was a spectacular send off, there must have been well over 100,000 people there over the course of the weekend, peaking on race start day, Sunday. The crews from each team had their moment of glory on stage to their boat songs, before we made our way to the boats and slipped mooring lines. We were quickly into the routine and activity on the boat began almost straight away.

Prior to the race start we made some final waves to the crowds on shore and posed for some sponsor photos, before a final crew brief from Pete our skipper. The time seemed to be passing in a blur before I knew it the ten minute start gun sounded. Four minutes. One minute. Ten, Nine, Eight..... Bang the start cannon for the Clippers 09-10 race fired and we were off. Leg 1 to Rio via a stop in La Rochelle where I'm writing this blog from.

It was a close and fiercely competitive start as you can see from the photo here, with most boats very close until we were well out the Humber. On board Jamaica Lightning Bolt we had a pretty good start, hovering around 4th or 5th, all the time trying our best to trim sails to track down those ahead.

Before long we were into our watch system and we would begin the process of gel-ing into our individual teams. I was assigned the position of bowman for our first leg, and I hope this continues for a long time to come. Its the high adrenaline position on the boat, but a crucial one at the same time. We didn't get the spinnaker out on this first race but I worked with the rest or our watch to get poled out headsails setup and keep the yankee and staysail well trimmed. Throughout the day and night your role is to check the sail trim every 20 minutes or whenever there is a wind shift or tactical change. Many massive waves came right over my head even in this first leg where the weather was relatively calm. Its going to be a hardcore job for the next few months but one i'm really relishing.

During our first night we peaked, a little to soon as it turns out, as we reached 3rd place pushing hard to track down Spirit of Australia in second.

There was soon a tactical decision then to be made. The wind conditions were pretty well set up for a spinnaker run, but being our very first race we decided to take the more conservative approach of a poled out headsail. It has since paid dividends as we have found out here in La Rochelle that Finland, the winning boat, has snapped their spinnaker pole and there are a few others that are not in as good a shape as Jamaica.

We had a run then of about 12 hours where we were the quickest of any boat in the fleet by quite a way and things were looking really good for a strong result in the first race. A later tactical error of taking a more offshore route round a wind farm in the North Sea undid a little of our hard work unfortunately as we slipped back to 5th.

We then had a sustained period of really close racing with Cape Bretton Island (you can see some of these photos on my google account at the end) which was great fun considering we were so close after several hundred miles of sailing. 5th then 6th then 5th then 6th. Positions were changing at every position update and it was some of the most exciting sailing i've done.

Eventually we found ourselves rounding Ushant and making our approach to La Rochelle. It was close all the way but we finally finished just behind a quick Cape Bretton Island in a respectable 6th place. We arrived at La Rochelle at about 7 o'clock on Wednesday night, a few hours too late unfortunately to get through the lock into the part of the harbour where the Clippers boats would be moored. So after a night on anchor with a few other Clippers we made out way into the harbour at the next high tide at 3 the next morning.

I've since spent the last 2 days working on the boat and had a great surprise when my father turned up on the pontoon. The plan nearly didn't work out when it looked like I would be snowed under with work to do, but I was really pleased when I managed to free myself up to spend a night out catching up before I next see him in San Francisco.

I now have a few free days in beautiful La Rochelle before we head off into the wild Atlantic. I'm so excited about doing what I hope will be the first of many major ocean crossings. Anyway, must head off now, things to organise before we have our next briefings, prize givings and send off. Will blog again from the next port but in the mean time you can check out the rest of my photos here: http://picasaweb.google.co.uk/collinsoceanracing/Race1HullToLaRochelle#

Don't forget as well that you can get the race positions here: www.clipperroundtheworld.com

Until next time,

Pete