No Such Thing As Smooth Sailing When Racing ’Round Around the World

Clipper Round the World 2011-12

The Clipper Round the World yacht race is a pretty special 11-month event. At 40,000 miles, it’s the longest yacht race in the world and, incredible though it sounds, it’s open to sailing novices. In fact, half of the 500 people who sign up to the bi-annual Clipper Challenge have never sailed before. This year the youngest competitor is 18, while the oldest is 72. Women (I, being one of them) comprise about 40-percent of the crews, and 15 nationalities are represented. The fleet are currently doing battle with the furies of the Southern Ocean, en route from Cape Town, South Africa, to Western Australia. Half of us will earn membership to the elite club of Round the World racing yachtsmen and women, fewer people have earned this membership than have climbed Everest. The rest of us will share just a portion of this odyssey, sailing one or more race legs. I’ll be joining my crew for the longest race leg, across the North Pacific. That translates to 5,700 miles and 35 days of four-hours-on/four-hours-off from sub-zero Quingdao in China, to the Golden Gate welcome of California. Deep ocean racing sailors normally have years of experience before embarking on voyages of this magnitude. We get four weeks. The pace of our training is the first challenge—a combination of theoretical knowledge, physical competence and memory, packed into long days of drills and hours on the water in the 68-foot racing yachts. I start off slowly and clumsily; putting my thumbs in the wrong places and struggling to manhandle ropes into messy half-remembered knots. The reality is that we must all improve. When your life depends on that knot, you’ve got to know it instinctively. The ocean doesn’t give you a second chance because you’re a beginner. My brain rumbles through helpful acronyms to make sure I ease the vang before I haul down on the topping lift, to make sure I remember what a broad reach is, to make sure I tie a bowline correctly. For real [read: experienced] sailors, this is about as basic as remembering to pull your pants down before sitting on the toilet. But we are improving, the peril (real and imagined) bonds us tightly together, and we’re learning from each other. It’s sobering to realize that my life is utterly in the hands of my teammates: You can’t sail these boats on your own. They demand a crew of 18, working a 24-hour shift pattern, for however long it takes to reach the next safe harbour. The Clipper race boats are identical, stripped-down and sturdy enough to take the battering that eleven months of ocean racing will inevitably throw at them. But—despite best preparations, plentiful training, and modern technology—if the ocean throws a bender, a tiny fiberglass yacht is a vulnerable target. The race runs every other year, and in the 2009-2010 race, one boat was wrecked on a reef near Indonesia, a skipper broke his leg, a crewman fell overboard (but was safely retrieved before the seas claimed him), and another boat suffered a ‘knock-down’ (which happens when a freakishly large wave powers into the side of the boat with such force that it slaps it into the sea). In this case, the boat turned 120 degrees, the deck crew were plunged into the icy waters of the Pacific, and the mast was broken. Everyone survived. For most of us, this doesn’t put us off. In fact, this is sort of why we want to do it. Racing a yacht around the world isn’t easy, and, at many points, it won’t be pleasant. But it’s not often that you get a chance to do something so immense, something that demands equal measures of courage and patience and stamina. I want this sailing experience to push my mental and physical limits. I want that very visceral realisation that we humans are small and not at all mighty. I want the ocean to put us in our place but for my crew to ultimately triumph, like a cork popping back to the surface, ebullient and unscathed. I have to wait until early March to join the fleet, but, until then, I must prepare. I need to get strong and stay healthy—my fitness will not be my limiting factor. And now that I’m no longer a sailing rookie, I need to get more experience under my belt. The more I practice and prep, the more I can enjoy the adventure! Clipper Round the World Yacht Race is currently recruiting for the 2013-2014 race.

Read more from guest blogger Mary-Ann Ochota on her website.