michael's round the world adventure

Race 10, Day 9. Cork Clipper Blog. Mike Lewis.

Today on Cork Clipper we are enjoying some of the best sailing we have had since we got our new boat in Panama. The heavyweight kite is up, we have 20-25 knots of breeze, and we are getting just about 10 knots out of the boat – the best speeds we have had out of her. And of course today is the day I spend down below cooking and cleaning for 24 hours! Ah well, I was allowed up a little earlier for a half hour of play, before being sent back to the galley to rescue the bread!

So, we are no longer racing, but we on Cork are not a crew to let some favourable winds pass us by, so we are working to get the best speed out of the boat as we head towards New York. We are just over 300 miles from our destination now, so the sweepstakes for our arrival time have started already. Thursday morning seems to get the majority vote, fingers crossed we’ll be in for a good diner breakfast.

The mood on board Cork remains, as always, upbeat, but of course we are all gutted not to be racing any more. The decision to retire was certainly not taken lightly – we are all competitive racers, and would really love to be up there fighting it out with the leaders. Unfortunately, particularly in light airs, our heavy, metal boat is no match for the stripped down, fibreglass, Clipper 68s. We have to hope for some heavier winds in the next few races, which hopefully will see us challenging the Clipper boats once again. Ultimately, we had to retire in order to have the time necessary to prepare for the race to Cape Breton Island – a race which we will, as usual, go all out to push the boat as hard as we know how!

So, other events on board? Well, last night our mainsail tack detached from the boom gooseneck (following all of this?). It was an undramatic failure, well spotted by Cat as she came off watch and I came on. We managed to get one of the reefing line strops onto the tack, which sorted the issue until Hannah got a more permanent solution fitted this morning, which should take us into New York. We had a good day of maintenance yesterday, taking advantage of light airs to get into the jobs that we would normally have to do in port. So Noreen, Orla and Cat got to work on the headsails – checking them over, fitting new tell tales, and making any necessary repairs. Paddy did some great carpentry down below, sorting out a lot of dodgy hinges and repairing some drawers. Jacqui drew the short straw, but did a great job servicing the heads. And Freya, Helen, Kev, Marco and Tom joined me in getting the thirteen winches on board stripped down, cleaned and serviced.


So, the lunchtime rush is about to begin down here just as I can feel the boat accelerating from another nice gust of wind. I’ll leave them to their fun up top, and get back to the pasta!


Slan agus beannacht!