Friday the 13th takes its toll on the Clipper fleet

Gold Coast Australia has swooped down from the north and into first place, making maximum use of the favourable current and nudging out Derry-Londonderry from the position they had been holding as race leaders.

But the team had something of a setback this morning when the yacht broached, breaking a spinnaker pole.

“The spinnaker pole is replaceable and we had the heavyweight spinnaker ready to fly again within the hour after doing some minor repairs, although we waited until the sun was properly up and there were no more rogue gusts before a re-hoist. Being Friday the Thirteenth we cannot be cautious enough!” says Richard Hewson, skipper of the Australian yacht.

Now with a little more than 100 miles to the gate, where the fleet will suspend racing to safely negotiate the poorly charted waters of the Celebes Sea, the ten teams are fully focused on achieving the best possible elapsed time.

They will resume racing as they exit the Sulu Sea. Each of the teams must report the times they cross the suspension and restart gates within three hours of doing so. The team that wins Race 7 will be the one whose time is the shortest for the first part of the race added to the time they take to reach the finish line in Singapore from the moment they start racing again.

In addition to the fixed navigation hazards, in these waters fisherman going about their daily lives also make for something of an obstacle course for the 68-foot racing yachts.

“Last night we saw the first of many Philippine fishing boats,” Richard reports. “During the day their colourful paint patterns and interesting construction delight the crew, and at night they have a similar appearance of bright lights of various colours that rarely represent the correct navigation lights. They move randomly (as do we while we sail) and so it makes collision avoidance strategies interesting to say the least, especially when we have a squall charging down on us with a spinnaker up making our sail plan not very manoeuvrable. Still, the fishing boats have right of way so we are ready to drop the spinnaker in an instant to alter course if required,” he explains.

In addition to the boats the fisherman drop ‘fish aggravation devices’, three-metre cylinders attached to the sea floor on a two-kilometre line.

“The FADs are hard to see during the day when there is more than a one-metre swell and are unlit so are almost impossible to see at night. They act as artificial reefs in more ways than one as not only do they attract fish, but if you hit them in a sailing yacht at ten knots they have the possibility of doing lots of damage. So far today we have seen four FADs and we are keeping a close eye out for more as we sail down the Philippine coast.”

Gold Coast Australia’s crew are not the only team to have had a bit of bad luck on Friday the Thirteenth.

Geraldton Western Australia’s skipper, Juan Coetzer says their day “Started off with a bang just before sunrise. We were holding off Qingdao quite nicely when there was banging underneath the boat.

“The helm at the time, Ian Geraghty, said he had looked behind the boat after the incident and saw a few logs adrift. This is what we must have hit.

“At the same time we got hit by a massive squall. The medium weight kite was up and we had 24 knots of apparent wind doing 12 to 14 knots boat speed. So, the crew jumped into action and dropped the kite as soon as possible. Thankfully it came down in one piece.

“The crew who weren’t on deck started in the rope locker, working their way to the aft end of the boat, looking for any possible holes or cracks in the hull. Fortunately all is well and, from a visual check over the side, all looks good as well. One of my standing orders is to check the bilges every hour and this is a good thing, because you can always spot a problem sooner than later.

“During this mayhem we managed to tidy up and hoist our heavyweight kite as we thought it may get a little winder today. Great all set, off to bed I go... I was just about to arrive in LaLa Land when there was another bang and the kite released itself from the pole. The crew did a great recovery, dropping, re-woolling and hoisting it again. All in a day’s work!”

- Clipper Round the World Media