Clipper Round the World Yacht Race - Frustrating conditions

by Jan Ridd on 12 Apr 2014 On day 26 of race 10 in the Clipper Round the World Yacht Race skipper of Team Garmin, Jan Ridd, shares his frustration as his team is almost in touching distance of Golden Gate Bridge, 'How frustrating is this. We sail over 6,000 miles across the Pacific Ocean, to get 65 miles from the finish to end up struggling to sail in under three knots of wind.

'We were aware of a large patch of light airs around the finish area as the boats ahead of us showed in the schedules. All was going well as we increased our sail, as the wind strength dropped, we then hoisted our medium weight spinnaker to bear away and sail a tight angle reaching with the spinnaker.

'Everything seemed to be working out to plan for once, but somewhere in my past I must have been very bad as the wind slowly backed to the worst possible direction exactly 180 degrees from the direction we need to sail, meaning we had no chance of sailing our course.'

PSP Logistics position was broadcast at 0600 UTC this morning after a period of 48 hours in Stealth Mode. With Jamaica Get All Right remaining in Stealth Mode until 1800 UTC today, only time will tell if PSP Logistics have managed to improve on their position within the fleet in the closing stages of Race 10. Skipper, Chris Hollis reflects on the frustrating conditions of the last 48 hours:

'As I write this we are three hours away from coming out of Stealth Mode. I don’t really expect much change in our position but hopefully we have made a couple of miles up on Jamaica Get All Right and Mission Performance.

'The last 48 hours have painful in term of course. The wind has been coming from exactly where we want to go and sometimes, even a little south of east. We did try and tack briefly to see what heading we could achieve heading north east, but as suspected, it was worse than terrible!'