Memoirs of Santa Cruz by John Braithwaite, aged 33 and a bit

The penultimate leg of the 2008 Clipper round the World yacht race has started. First up, race 9, a 3,000 mile dash down the West Coast of the United States from Santa Cruz to Panama, before a non racing transit through the Panama Canal, followed by race 10 to Jamaica. Then it's leg 7 when they're homeward bound to Liverpool via New York, Nova Scotia and Cork.


As the race began Joff Bailey, Race Director, outlined the task ahead :


“The teams have a wild downwind ride for the first half of this race which will see them achieving some great speeds and they will make rapid progress south. They will all try to make as direct a route possible, parallel to the coast, but at the same time trying not to get too close as the effect of the land my reduce wind strength. The trick along this initial part of the race is to try not to damage too many of the downwind sails. Several boats have recently been penalised for damaging sails and once the Race Committee considers the repairs and replacements in Santa Cruz further penalty points may be awarded."

Joff continues, “As the fleet approaches the southern tip of Baja California, the winds will start to reduce and become much less stable in direction. At this point the direct route along the coast is heavily favoured in terms of the least miles. However, fickle and inconsistent winds closer in may see some teams opting to sail further offshore in order to benefit from better wind speeds and direction.”


Sail damage will indeed be something team JAMAICA will be very wary of as they were docked 3 points by the Race committee for those disastrous spinnaker wraps and with this race being mainly downwind those spinnies will be up a lot.


There's certainly a very long way to go in this race so as the boats are so tightly packed we asked team JAMAICA round the Worlder John Braithwaite to share his memories of the Santa Cruz stopover just before the start of the race 9 :

"Hi,

Race 8 was a great race. Despite sailing into the wind for all but 2 days, this race was the most pleasant so far for a lot of reasons:

1. Our new watch system. We had 3 hours sailing and then 6 hours off watch, followed by 3 hours sailing then 3 hours mother watch then 6 hours off. And repeat. So this means we get bigger chuncks of sleep and do a short mother watch each day rather than a mother watch every 8 days or so.


2. We were able to sail in the right direction - it makes such a pleasant change from the last time we were sailing into the wind going to China. When you are sailing accross the largest ocean of the world at 8 miles an hour its nice to know you are doing it in the right direction rather than having to go at 45 degrees and in reality only be making 4 miles an hour in the direction you want to go.


3. We had a good race with Liverpool and beat them - get in! In the middle of the race we had a good spell where Liverpool were in sight for about 3 days and we had a bit of a tactical battle as the wind changed from the the south to the north.


4. The weather was just about perfect for sailing, if maybe a little cold. It was more cold than I expected but I would rather that than too hot.


5. We had lots of food and we knew what it was. Nothing like buying your food in a werstern speaking country for making sure you don't end up with random bits bits of meat.
   

The Santa Cruz stopover has been good too. Santa Cruz has an unofficial slogan 'keep Santa Cruz weird' and its doing a good job. We had a lovely meal at a vegan restaurant this evening, the local bar is straight out of the movies and has a good supply of interesting locals.

The people from the yacht club have been most welcoming. A trip up to San Francisco over the weekend was a lovely break away from the yachts. We spent time looking round Alctraz, the Golden Gate Bridge and Downtown, then ran back down for the Clipper Prize giving. At which we succeeded in winning the most important prize of the evening...the Hull & Humber organised charity Gurning Competition - nice one Claire.

Well its the night before we leave to sail to the Panama Cannal. I'm really looking forward to seeing the Cannal and sailing back into the Atlantic, and on to Jamaica for a bit of a party.

One love JB"

Only 10 hours into this race and team tactics have already split the fleet with JAMAICA heading a break away pack to the West, closely followed by Durban and Liverpool, as the race viewer below shows. These three teams are clearly hoping to capitalise on the stronger winds further away from the coast, whilst the other teams, led by Singapore and Nova Scotia, remain further in-land.

It means that JAMAICA appears to be further down the rankings in 7th place, but as wind speeds develop, it could prove a similar masterstroke to the one which saw Qingdao and Singapore shoot up the leaderboard in the last race. Here's hoping ....