Andy Hillan has just sent a further update from his passage to South America – makes great reading In my last email I was 2000nm from the equator…..at 0700 on the last day of September we crossed the sacred line of 0 degrees latitude. I had come of watch at 0600 and stayed up for the event…..unsure why as there was no sign, no line on the sea to say we were on 0degrees, but we were compelled to stay up. Nobody on board had ever sailed across it before…..officially our status had changed from pollywog to shellback. We were quite muted as we crossed, a combination of tiredness and awe. Later in the day we would pay tribute to Neptune, bestow him with gifts and March on towards Punta del Este, a further 2000nm away.
After the spooky Doldrums corridor, our natural track would take us to the ocean sprint…..as one of the lead boats we would of course sail it as fast as possible. 36 hours of downwind sailing we hoped……nope! The NE tradewinds change to usually reliable SE tradewinds but we found ourselves once again close-hauled for most of it. When the wind backed towards east we would get a kite up…..we are really good at hoisting kites and packing kites…..dropping kites though, old man trouble can still pitch up occasionally costing us time. We will get plenty more practice as long as we don’t run out of spinnakers!!
Occasionally we would find ourselves sailing at 45-50 degrees to the wind with a spinnaker….shouldn’t really be possible and nobody on board thought it was! Boat on her ear again. We decided that it was unlikely we would do well in ocean sprint given wind direction….the following boats would surely get fast downwind conditions. So we sailed diagonally across it to position ourselves for off wind sailing on exit towards Brazil. When the results were issued, we were delighted with 2 points….2nd fastest on the sprint, just minutes behind the boringly fast boat GOSH. Those lads and lassies remain fast and hard to work with.
On and on, watch after watch, one day merges into another. 1 week to go is a milestone as we count down single figures to arrival. The temperature drops dramatically and the tradewinds disappear leaving more variable but forecastable (probably not a word) winds, often strong in nature. 2kts of favourable ocean currents, wind driven, not lunar, can be picked up closer inshore, but navigation must be sharp. There are plenty of hazards.
GOSH went inshore, we didn’t. Their track became an ecg trace as they avoided dangers, they came out again, further out than us and got stronger wind. Closing Punta, 2.5 days to run, we had a 6 to 7hr lead on them…..our medivac time penalty was 5hrs twenty minutes! It was gonna be very very tight. 24hrs to go, in stronger wind further East, they reduced the deficit to 30 nm….about 2 hrs. We were destined for 2nd place! But we wouldn’t give up line honours ….. Big decision. Gybe out and get their wind to stay ahead, or remain West of them going 2kts slower and risk being pipped at the post! We gybed….flying full main , staysail and Yankee 1.
Yankee 1 is enormous…powerful sail…all hanked on of course. These hanked on Sails are cut so well they give fabulous performance and pointing ability. If I was 30 years younger CO would have hanked on Sails. On the Clipper 70, the slot between the 2 forestays is <2m. A very small space to get this big sail through in a gybe.
“Helm to weather…lee-ho Yankee”……Big fast eases on the Yankee sheet are crucial to get right, until clew is just at the gap between the forestays, then grind like your life depends on it on new active sheets to get that clew and sail across. Get it wrong, then you must abort the gybe or pay the price. We gybe….sail flew too far forward….erroneously we ground it back and around the forestay with brute force these enormous primary winches ‘can exert. Hank 6 through to hank 14 caused serious damage.to the cloth as we ripped it back across! But that was with the Yankee 2 the previous night….had it been daylight the gybe would have been aborted. Now, just hours from Punta our 2 gybes out to the GOSH rhumb line were executed like a professional crew. It was like exiting the pit lane ahead of the lead car in a F1 race….in the lead with little to now cost us line honours.
We received the canon morning of 11th October, a 200+ crowd cheering on the breakwater (clipper very big here…their boat Punta won this leg last race with Uruguay skipper!!).
27 days at sea, 5980nm, we had arrived and boy did Punta del Este yacht club know it. Beer, beer more beer….sweet! GOSH arrived a mere 1 to 2hrs later…amazing after 27d. Wonderful hosts, warm hospitality and a beautiful town. We all felt great coming off the boat….but the next 3 days we all complained of leg muscle pain. I guess your legs get little rest on a pitching and rolling yacht.
All suitably recovered, boat cleaned, repairs carried out (lots and lots spinnaker stitching….Hyde sails sent out a sailmaker who cut new panels for us to sew in. I was in charge of Yankee hand stitching given my day job….the Yankees are work horses with much more work to do )
2 days to departure for Capetown, in the gym most mornings and ready for battle once again. Expect the S Atlantic to be cold, windy and rough. Still think the N Channel on a bad day will be good preparation. Let’s see.
Further report from S Africa….2.5 weeks time. My advice to the crew if we want to beat GOSH……steer straight and trim trim trim. That’s all there is between us after some investigation….we need to trim more with better helming.
Andy
