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.