Race Director's Report
Race 1: London, UK to Rio de Janeiro, Brazil

06 October 2015

The departure from St Katharine Docks was nothing short of spectacular. All twelve yachts passing through Tower Bridge was a great achievement. I am so proud of the skippers and crews who passed through Tower Bridge and into the upper pool. I’m sure this is the first time in many years that such a number of sailing vessels had been west of Tower Bridge.

The racing west down the English Channel was close and exciting with the fleet bunching up at Ushant off the coast Brittany. But this is where the ‘luck’ or was it planned tactics became evident? The leading yachts including LMAX Exchange managed to squeeze around this headland on a favourable tide whilst the majority of the fleet were caught with a foul tide. This drove some of the yachts backwards as it was stronger than the dying breeze. It was a classic case of the rich getting richer and the poor getting poorer.

The passing of Andy Ashman came as a great shock to us all. The comradeship, resilience and bonding that the IchorCoal crew displayed in Porto should be a real lesson to all of us. This tragedy has brought them closer together and they managed to pull off a fantastic result on corrected time. Andy would have been proud, ‘Roger that’.

The next tactical decision was how to negotiate the Canary Islands. Go west of them or risk being becalmed in the lee to the south? In the end some yachts played a blinder by taking advantage of the wind acceleration zones between the islands. Again LMAX Exchange was amongst these yachts.

Some bad luck for Great Britain and an injured crew member meant they had to alter course and flatten the yacht out to give them a chance to square themselves away. This resulted in some lost miles but they managed to hold on for a creditable third place and two Scoring Gate points to boot. LMAX Exchange scored maximum points at the gate with Derry~Londonderry~Doire claiming one point.

Going into the Doldrums Corridor motoring phase LMAX Exchange had built up quite a lead on the rest of the fleet. With the actual Doldrums so far north and a tropical depression to the north-west affecting the wind, many yachts found themselves heading south into headwinds and choppy seas. But they still made time to prepare themselves for the long port tack to Rio.

All the yachts passed through the Kingdom of Neptune and were initiated and granted passage to become Shellbacks, a most coveted award indeed.

The passage southwest to Rio was a fast one but all the yachts suffered lighter winds and slower speeds as they approached the coast of Brazil. The tail-enders did suffer some though but this can be traced back to earlier tactical decisions particularly around the island of Madeira.

All in all a very successful first race of the 2015-16 race. I predict the teams will on get better and faster as the race progresses onward to Cape Town.