Still out in front - we bring you three reports from our crew on board

At 12:00 today JAMAICA's lead had been pegged back to 41 miles. Having sailed 60 miles in the last 12 hours, she has lost out a little to the chasing fleet but is still in a commanding position.

Indeed an exclusive report for jamaicaclipper.com which we have just received from one of our crew members on board, Dinshaw Avari, confirms that the problem with the generator they have been experiencing over the past few days has been responsible for the lost miles :

"Finally Simon & Ralph, working all night until 10am today, have managed to make a temporary fix on our Generator problems.

Because of this we've been charging our batteries off the main engine which only works on port tack, so we had to tack the other day and lost miles to others.

On the sea as we head northwards it's colder now. We've started wearing our "oilies". Very soon when we hit Vietnam we'll be in our thermals. Winds have picked up and so have the seas - high chops and bumpy!

Dinshaw."

As the illustration above shows JAMAICA has tacked to the East in order to follow race orders to leave Taiwan to port (to the left of the boat for the uninitiated!) Indeed, JAMAICA appears to be in a good position. If you look at the black line behind JAMAICA showing the direction in which she is sailing, there is every chance that she will be able to clear the Northern coast of the Philippines before having to tack Northwards passing Taiwan (the circular island in the top of the graphic) to their left hand side before turning left and heading North West to Qingdao.

JAMAICA can feel the fleet nipping at their heels but, having worked so hard to build up a good lead in first place, they are doing everything they can to hold onto it despite the various obstacles they encountered through the night: As Skipper Simon Bradley reported :

“Much of last night was spent avoiding two large fishing fleets and several large ships which, in turn, were also avoiding the fishing fleets and perhaps us as well. This meant little sleep and a high level of concentration from everybody on board. We’ve lost miles to the fleet which is not good, so now we’re trying to up our performance.”

In her typically stoical fashion crew member Claire Maloney explains why life at the head of the pack is serious business for the crew :

Well, it’s such a novelty that we’ll remind you again: JAMAICA is still in the lead.

Frankly, we’re going to enjoy this for as long as possible. Our lead is getting shorter, but we still have some miles in the bag, and are doing everything we can to hold onto them.

The crew are taking things seriously, and are supplementing their usual diet with fighting food, very kindly provided by the Jamaican Tourist Board. Daily Jamaican Blue Mountain Coffee and rounds of Jamaican Rum Cake seem to helping. Unfortunately the rum that they also gave us is taped up in a cardboard box and stowed under the Skipper’s bunk - not to be broken into until we reach dry land. Sir Robin might well be right when he declared this a great incentive for the crew to get a move on to Qingdao. As Lisa said, we’re taking the rhumb line to the rum bar.

It was pointed out to me today that all we’re doing is sailing fast into the cold weather… We had a brief interlude of really beautiful weather today. Having been sweltering in the heat and humidity for weeks, we really enjoyed the cooler breeze and gentle sunshine that we had today. It was described as a perfect English summer’s day on the water. The layers are all coming out of the dry bags for the first time, as long sleeves are needed in the evening, but it’s still not really cold. It is still hard to imagine sailing in the chill of the Chinese winter, but people do like to remind us -frequently - that this is the coldest winter there in quite some time. Great.

Apart from the soon coming cold, it is the fishing boats which make sailing this leg so tricky. Last night we came across two fishing fleets for the first time. All we saw were about 15 white lights dotted off our port side, plus the lights on two large ships. The ships were avoiding the fishing boats, we were avoiding the fishing boats and the fishing nets, and the ships might have been avoiding us but we weren’t taking any chances and decided to avoid the ships as well. It made for a busy night. Funnily enough, we haven’t seen any fishing boats at all in the day time.

The schedule is due in any minute now, and we’ll be checking to see miles lost or gained, and working out where the other boats are. Hopefully all still behind us, for now at least.

One love
Claire