Clipper Race: Tough sledding to Panama finish

(May 5, 2014) – The captivating denouement for the Clipper Race fleet of the PSP Logistics Panama 100 Cup is unravelling but with extremely light tropical winds and the teams beating upwind, it could still be a long and painful finish.

The Clipper Race Committee shortened the course for Race 11 last night and named the new finish line at the Fallarones Gate, around 75 miles away for the fleet front runners at 0800 UTC.

Henri Lloyd has overtaken GREAT Britain and at 0900 UTC was four miles ahead, in the lead. Team Garmin has also overtaken Jamaica Get All Right to go into third position as of 0900 UTC. The two teams are within sight of each other and are now match racing to the finish line.

Jan Ridd, skipper of Team Garmin, aiming for his team’s first podium finish, said: “I know that the last few hours of this race will be very hard and we will have to be on top form to just keep ahead of Jamaica Get All Right.

“I think everyone on board will be glad that this race will soon be over as it has been an emotional roller coaster with the big gains and losses made by different boats as we enter into different localised weather patterns. At least now we are all in the same area and if the weather stays as forecast we should have a fairly good run to the new finish line.”

Pete Stirling, skipper of Jamaica Get All Right said: “Having another boat in sight is always a good bench mark of your own performance. Jan and I go back a while as we were both skippers on the Clipper 2009/10 Race so have some experience of sailing one on one against each other. At the moment Team Garmin have a slight advantage over us but we are working hard to turn that around. Just like old times!”

Report by event media.

Skipper reports: http://www.clipperroundtheworld.com/skipper-reports
Race tracker: http://yb.tl/clipper2013-race11
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.