Henri Lloyd takes pole position in Clipper Race

(April 26, 2014) – It’s been an eventful 24 hours for Switzerland in the Clipper Race, which after activating its Stealth Mode emerged in third place on the leaderboard this morning. Meanwhile, GREAT Britain has relinquished its lead and is currently neck and neck with Team Garmin in second place as Henri Lloyd takes pole position in the PSP Logistics Panama 100 Cup.

After an exhausting tactical 24 hours skipper of Switzerland, Vicky Ellis and her team celebrated the good news. However, with just 7 miles now separating the top 7 teams on the leaderboard, this close match race is still far from decided. Vicky described the atmosphere on board:

“The morning’s dawn that greeted us was spectacular, almost as good as the schedule news that we received at the same time. Announcing it at

the dawn watch handover to an eager crew, the cockpit erupted. We were out of Stealth Mode, climbing five places and going from the bottom of the leaderboard to the top in just over two days. What a wonderful achievement team! Nothing ventured, nothing gained.”

Meanwhile Henri Lloyd has managed to narrowly sneak ahead of GREAT Britain and Team Garmin. As the close match racing continues, skipper Simon Talbot commented, “such close racing really does make great crew motivation and the team have been working tirelessly to keep up the pace.”

Meanwhile, Jan Ridd skipper of Team Garmin continues to fight off his nearest competitors as OneDLL and Derry~Londonderry~Doire persistently chase his teams shadow. Jan explains:

“This morning we saw OneDLL and Derry~Londonderry~Doire come into view on the horizon both boats were on a different tack which we would cross shortly. When the yachts got closer Derry ~Londonderry~Doire crossed ahead of us and we gybed just in front of OneDLL to end up in exactly the same position all three boats were in two days ago before the Scoring Gate, where our different tactics separated us. It shows how intense this matched fleet racing can be, as we now know that all boats are performing equally and being sailed expertly by their crews, which means this race has the potential of being very tight all the way to the finish.”

Report by event media.

Skipper reports: http://www.clipperroundtheworld.com/skipper-reports
Race tracker: http://yb.tl/clipper2013-race10
Race website: http://www.clipperroundtheworld.com

Background:
The 40,000 mile Clipper 2013-14 Round the World Yacht Race began in London, UK on September 1 for the fleet of twelve identical Tony Castro designed Clipper 70s.

Twelve teams started the 3,350 mile leg from San Francisco, USA to Panama on April 19, and are expected to arrive by May 10.

The race route includes Rio de Janeiro, Brazil; Cape Town, South Africa; Albany, Sydney, Hobart and Brisbane, Australia; Singapore; Qingdao, China; San Francisco, USA; Panama; Jamaica; New York, USA; Derry-Londonderry, Ireland; and Den Helder, Netherlands before returning to London in July.