michael's round the world adventure

Well, it turns out that Race 13 was destined to be a frustrating one after all. We had some great sailing for the first days of the race - upwind as far as Land's End, then bearing off the wind and broad reaching along the south coast of England. It was strange to be sailing through the waters in which we had spent so much time during training - around the Isle of Wight, off Dartmouth, and all along that stretch of coastline.


Unfortunately, once we began to turn the corner around Dover, we were once again hit by very light winds. There were huge frustrations to follow. Sitting in heavy rain, very low visibility, in the middle of the night directly outside Dover Port - one of the busiest in the world - with no wind and subsequently very little control over the direction of the boat. Not something I want to repeat. The next major issue - although any movement between these absolute calms was pretty slow going - came as we tried to thread the 6 mile gap between Thanet wind farm at the Thames Estuary, and the major shipping lane just offshore. Again, the wind died completely, and with the tide pushing us backwards towards the wind farm we were forced to anchor in 40 metres of water. Again, huge frustration.


So, we finally arrived in Ijmuiden a long way behind the rest of the fleet, with no chance of a good result. It's looking like heavy winds for the race to Hull, which starts today, so perhaps we will be able to push ourselves in amongst the Clipper fleet for this race. Time will tell.