michael's round the world adventure

Race 10, Day 3. Cork Clipper Blog. Mike Lewis.

It’s the third day of our second race aboard the new Cork Clipper, and we continue to learn more about the boat, both how she sails and about the systems down below! After lightening the load in Jamaica, removing spare sails, an outboard motor, a television, amongst an astonishing amount of other items that we don’t require for ocean racing, we set off from Port Antonio for a race start on Monday afternoon. 

After saying our farewells to well wishers – Sarah, Nikklar, Helen, Trisha et al, it was great to see you down there – and wishing safe and fast sailing to our competitors and friends on the other boats, we headed out to refuel before joining the other boats on the start line. Hannah displayed some excellent boat handling skills to get the most un-manoeuvrable boat in the fleet out of a very awkward spot in the marina, and in to a similarly awkward refuelling berth, and then we were good to go.

The start was in fairly light airs, and all the boats got away without incident. We were very pleased to round the first mark in sixth place, with Edinburgh, Hull & Humber, California, and Qingdao chasing us down. Kev seemed particularly happy about this, and there should be some good pictures from the committee boat to prove this fact! The next bit was pretty much as expected, the faster Clipper 68’s passing us one by one, until during our first night at sea Qingdao passed just 10 meters away, leaving us at the back of the fleet. We know though, that we are still in a good position on handicap, and continue to push the boat as hard as we can to remain in touch. Tough work in the heat of the tropics!

The lighter airs have meant that seasickness has not been an issue so far in this race. Perhaps also as a result of the crew being more used to the motion of the boat, all stomachs have remained steely, so we are at full strength on watch. On my watch, our new crew member from Cork, Hugh, has been settling well into the banter that is fairly constant on Cork, giving just as good as he gets! Tom is back too – after racing from the start all the way to Australia, he rejoins a different boat, but it’s only the boat he needs to get used to – he has raced with a lot of the crew before.

It’s been interesting navigationally so far too – ensuring that we turned away from the coast of Cuba before getting within 12 miles of Guantanamo Bay seemed like a good plan. We then wove our way between Cuba and Haiti, giving both a fair berth, and are now picking our way towards the Bahamas – our last obstacle before getting to the open ocean again. This time it’s the Atlantic Ocean – closer and closer to home!

Mother Watch today then has been successful so far – trying to keep the demanding eaters happy is something I find at least as challenging as tackling the Southern Ocean, but with Helen to lead me through it we seem to have kept most people happy with fajitas, chocolate cake, fresh bread, and plenty of tea, coffee, and tang in between!

During Happy Hour today we had the results of the quizzes that we have been working on over the past couple of days. Hannah had set us some questions about the boat to ensure that we were getting to know her properly, and that we could find all of the safety critical systems. We passed that with flying colours – although upsettingly my watch didn’t get any extra points for the fantastic cover sheet that Nors put so much effort into – and returned the favour to Hannah with a quiz about her new crew and about Cork. I’m happy to report that she scored highly in the test, even managing to make a stab at sorting out the economy back home in the final essay question!


So Cork trucks onwards, her crew happy and working hard to get to New York City as quickly as possible. It’s great to be back together – a good result will be even better!


Slan agus beannacht!