Points of Sail

The last 48 hours have been quite eventful and very exciting, but rather than repeating to you the problems we have had, and our brand new spinnaker halyard breaking at 2am in the morning, that Matt has already mentioned in his Mission Performance Skipper report (11th Sept), I will instead give my views on the races and explain some of the basics of sailing this yacht across oceans.

If you asked me a few years ago how to sail a boat I wouldn't have known, having trained with the Clipper Race I know a lot more now, but I am still learning everyday. To sail a boat, it is unlikely you are able to just sail from A to B in a straight line (see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Points_of_sail ). Imagine the boat is at the centre of a clock face and the wind is coming towards the boat at 12 o'clock it is not possible to sail in the angle from 10.30 to 1.30 (the no go zone), sailing as close as possible to these, at these angles at around 10 and 2 is called close hauled or beating upwind. This is the most uncomfortable point of sailing, and in leg 5, around Singapore, we will be doing this with a lot of zig zags and not getting much sleep. It will get you in the direction you want to go but it is not the fastest point of sail. Reaching is from 9 to 7 and 3 to 5 on the clock; these can be fast points of sail where you can use a spinnaker, which we refer to as a kite sometimes. Doing this over the past few days we have been reaching speeds over 25 knots. Next comes running, where the wind is behind you, the sails are set out wide and again with a spinnaker. The Clipper 70's will benefit from this and we should get good speeds across the Southern Ocean and Pacific, although this all depends on the strength of the winds and the state of the sea. So if a boat appears to be behind in a race, it maybe that it has done the slower, harder bit first and if the crew get it right, they can then make up good speed.

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For now spirits are high on board, even though we are tired, we are all enjoying the great sailing.