Clipper Race: Race 14 Day 4 – Brewing Northerly

(June 11, 2014) – The fleet is making significantly better progress with the wind picking up and forecast to shift round to the north later today.

The skippers are weighing their options of when to gybe onto course in the unreliable wind. A complicated low pressure system is moving eastwards ahead of the fleet, and if the teams can stay in its coattails then the wind should gradually come round to the north to help them along.

Jamaica Get All Right, the most southerly yacht has picked up extra speed from the Gulf Stream currents and is now leading the fleet, with Switzerland falling into second and Derry~Londonderry~Doire down a place into third.

Pete Stirling, skipper of Jamaica Get All Right said, “In the course of 24 hours we have gone from being completely becalmed going nowhere with the windseeker up through to the light weight medium weight and now the heavy weight spinnaker with full mainsail as the wind has built.”

Matt Mitchell, skipper of  sixth place Mission Performance said, “It’s been a great day sailing and we have been making really good progress. Our boat speed has been a bit better than some of the other yachts around us and we have made some great gains on the rest of the fleet.

“The breeze has started filling in a little more now and is set to increase over the next few hours as well as shift around a bit more to the north. Anticipating this shift we chucked in a gybe a couple of hours ago in order to get a bit of a better angle coming down on the northerly.”

Report by event media.

Skipper reports: http://www.clipperroundtheworld.com/skipper-reports
Race tracker: http://yb.tl/clipper2013-race14
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.

The 12 teams began Race 14, the 2850 mile leg from New York City to Derry-Londonderry, Northern Ireland, on June 7. The fleet is estimated to arrive by June 21.

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 on July 12.