The Clipper fleet enters into there second week of racing, sailing from Qingdao, China to San Francisco, USA as they compete in the Clipper 2011/12 Round the World Yacht Race. The crew on-board Gold Coast Australia have been experiencing many challenges as we sail across the infamous North Pacific Ocean. Of these challenges one of the most noticeable has been the early gear breakages that are happening where anything from our spinnaker pole to our snap shackles to our sheets and halyards (ropes) are breaking and with the prospect of three more weeks at sea gear conservation is a must. There is no hardware store down the road out here when we are 3,000 nautical miles from land.

Gear breakages aside, day 8 dawned with a lovely following sea reaching an impressive 7 meters at times offering up some fantastic surfing opportunities and the nearest boat a great 33 nautical miles behind us as we hold the first place position. Allowing us to increase this lead is the regular speeds of 15-18 knots with my best being a fun 19.1 knots. Our days run was a Gold Coast Australia personal best of 280 nautical miles for this race giving us an average of 14 knots. By the end of that day our lead on Singapore the closest boat was 68 nautical miles.

Even with these fun sailing conditions the air temperature on deck is a very cold 4 degrees Celsius making a 4 hour watch system very challenging. Although we were sailing in 3-4 meter swell with 30-40 knots of winds screaming past our ears ripping off the tops of the waves and sending all that spray straight into our eyes and face striking us so hard it feels like a slap in the face, these things were all very difficult but it was the cold that was the worst. Once your gloves were wet you would loose all feeling in your hands, during the next stage you felt like you had placed your hands in a tub of burning cinders and stood by while they burn with a fiery pain. If you are unfortunate enough to have to take your gloves off to do something like undo a snap shackle and were double unfortunate to get splashed by a wave then you will loose all movement as they cramp into a tight ball making it near impossible to complete your task anyway. Now imagine this for 4 hours at a time with your toes going equally numb and keeping it up for a few days at a minimum.

Thankfully for us by day 11 the winds finally abated as we come out of the Low Pressure system offering conditions of a balmy 8 degrees Celsius on deck, blue sky’s and the most wonderful thing in the world, SUNSHINE. This is a great opportunity repair our broken spinnaker pole and to try to dry ourselves out a little bit and defrost our fingers and toes for a day but this is the only respite that we get as there is yet another Low Pressure System coming our way with predicted winds up to 40 knots by tomorrow evening. Storm preparations are underway and we all are bracing our selves for head winds and large rolling seas to offer up even more challenges.

On Day 12 we began making our way through the sail wardrobe from our largest to our smallest sails testing the strength of a very exhausted crew with one particularly rough watch from 4am to 8am in the morning when the seas are still freezing with winds blowing up to 33 knots we went for a sail change from the Yankee 2 (our medium sail) down to the Yankee 3 (our smallest head sail). This was a really tough sail change because the boat healed over on a 45 degree angle bashing into 4 meters of swell so there is constantly a wave trying to rip the sail out of your hands and over the side on top of this you are quite often getting air time as the boat falls off the back of a wave quicker than you do so you hang suspended until gravity takes over. If you are not getting airtime you are getting washed all around the deck. I was at one stage facing aft on my knees as I tried to free up some of the sail as the boat ploughed through a wave washing my knee right into the end of the broken spinnaker pole causing a considerable amount of pain. Later that same day I was washed again along the deck only to have the same damaged knee collide with a cleat on the deck.

Once this very rough sail change was complete we set up to put in reef 3 making our main sail as small as it will go without dropping it. I thought that the reef went okay but when I got back to the helm Skipper Richard Hewson said that we had broken the top three battens in the main sail. A batten is a fiberglass stick that is fitted in the sail to help hold the shape of the sail, now that these were broken the sail was flogging relentlessly in the increased 35-40 knots of wind. Richard made the decision that we would drop the Yankee 3 and hoist the Storm Jib and for this we would need our main sail up but as soon as this was done we would drop the main sail and hoist the Tri Sail until the winds abated enough to allow us to replace the broken battens. The sail change, as usual, took a lot longer that expected forcing us to continue to sail with the main sail up for longer than we would like. We also needed to wait until the next watch was on deck to help with the drop. Just as everyone arrived on deck and we were completing the pre-drop brief on the main sail the top slider (the piece that feeds the sail up the track) on the main broke free of the sail allowing the main sail to pull away from the mast track. A minuet later and the main had torn a good two-meter section of the track from the mast. I climbed up the mast steps to pull down the sail as we went for the drop, slowly easing the rest of the sliders down the broken section of the track so that we didn’t rip any more off. With the sail safely down there was not much that we could do about the track with the present weather conditions so we hoisted the storm Tri Sail and continued on our way. Even with all of these dramas and breakages our lead had now increased to 86 nautical miles with New York as the second boat having overtaken Singapore.

The winds of 30-40 knots held for the next few days making helming conditions very difficult. There was no moon showing it’s self through the dense clouds so you could not see anything, even the bow of the boat. On top of this we were sailing close hauled so the wind was whipping all the spray directly into your face so that as a necessity you needed to wear safety goggles or ski goggles just to be able to see the instruments that were your only guide for sailing direction. Blindly we would bash day and night gradually opening our lead on the rest of the fleet so that by day 14 at sea we held a fantastic 130 nautical mile lead on the Singapore who were in second place with Derry Londonderry in third place at a impressive 230 nautical miles behind. Go Gold Coast Australia.

LAT 39 32.8N
LONG 179 51.0W
DTF 2700
ETA 4th APR 12

WEATHER WIND158@25, SEA MOD 1M, SWELL E 3M, CLOUD O/C, BARO 1039

Gold Coast Australia continues to battle to windward under storm sails making surprisingly good speed as we sail towards San Francisco in race 9 of the Clipper Round the World Yacht Race and at this present point of time we are officially one day ahead of all the other boats in the fleet.

Today is actually yesterday, and at 1710 (0510 UTC) on the 20th of March (or was it the 19th of March, in position 39 32.6N 180 00.0E/W Team Gold Coast passed a major mile stone as we sailed across the date line 180 degrees east and west sending us into the order of the golden dragon. As we pass this meridian today becomes yesterday, and its about as close as most of us will come to Dr Who or Michael J Fox and going Back to the Future. This major milestone was celebrated with a few cans of assorted beer and a few cheers, and a short speech.

Whilst it is fantastic to go back a day in time I very much hope tomorrow morning is not a repeat of today?s when a large wave this morning at watch change over that unfortunately resulted in an injury that has temporarily incapacitated another valued crew member crew member Nick Woodward as he was thrown across the crew accommodation and into an aluminium pole that normally holds life jackets and other equipment. Nick was immediately seen to by our duty nurse Deb Miller and we got him into bed as soon as possible and have continued observations to confirm that he is ok. Once again Falmouth Coast Guard was excellent in their medical advice and we thank them for their support. Hopefully Nick will be back into the watch rotation soon.

Some good news is that with the reduced water over the deck over the last couple of days the boat has slightly dried out down below and our electrical equipment is now once again showing signs of life. I have managed to get all electrical devices working again with the exception of the two keyboards which have a short circuit. Consequently documents need to be typed using the on-screen keyboard or if conditions allow on a laptop computer and then transferred across.

With our mainsail still flaked away on our boom, and only our trisail set due to the strong winds, Singapore has been gradually eating away at our lead. While Ben and his team can ?smile with Glee? today (quote Bens blog 19/3/12), his speed advantage will hopefully be obliterated as soon as the weather enables us to hoist our mainsail and trial our magical solution. Team Gold Coast will continue to fight for victory and history has proven we have the discipline and endurance to sail fast until the finish. Team Gold Coast Australia will not stop until we are under the Golden Gate Bridge.

Richard Hewson

DUE TO COMPUTER AND COMMS ISSUES I WILL NOT BE ABLE TO POST A DAILY BLOG UNTIL SAN FRANSISCO UNLESS I MANAGE TO FIX IT. IN THE MEAN TIME STAY TUNED TO CLIPPER WEB SITE http://www.clipperroundtheworld.com

RICHARD HEWSON

LAT 38 02.0N
LONG 172 55.7E
DTF 3230
ETA 6 April 2012

WIND 000@20kts, Sea Rough 2m, Swell 3m, Sky 4/8 Cl St, Baro 1033?

Gold Coast Australia continues under trisail as conditions are still not suitable for a safe assent of the mast to try and re-mount the mainsail track. Earlier today we decided we had two options. Option 1 was to carry on at a slightly reduced performance under trisail while making good speed and try to stay ahead of the bad weather and fixt the problem when the wind dies off completely in about 4-5 days time. Option 2 was to heave to and try to resolve the problem now. After looking at the time it may take to fix the problem in this sea state we decided on option 1, this option is also a lot safer and keeps us prepared for the worst conditions possible if we are unlucky enough to be on the receiving end.

Gold Coast suffered a casualty today when Wayne Read was thrown against a guard wire when changing over yankee sheets after a splice gave way. We are very lucky that Waynes injuries are not more severe and have reviewed the incident with caution. Wayne is one of our more experienced round the worlders and it just go’s to show how dangerous these big powerful yachts can be when under load for excessive amounts of time.

The constant dampness is not only affecting the crew’s comfort onboard, it is now also having a big impact on all our electrical gear. Our sat-comms are on and off and we have lost all ECG signal possibly when a wave knocked the aerial. Today I dried to try all the electrics out, gave them a spray with water inhibitor and then dried them again but their status is still intimidate. I would not be surprised if we finish this race with no sat comms at all so if you do not hear from GCA for a while we are all ok, its just our sat-comms are down. This will also mean no weather data from satellite or ECG so we will be back to Meteorology 1.1 using the mark 1 eyball and a slightly dodgy (and now calibrated due to rough weather) barometer.

At this stage of the game we still hold a lead of over 100nm, and the weather from now on seems pretty self explanatory, basically the aim of the game is to get around the series of HP systems and then sail down the coast to San-Francisco. The wind has just started to veer, and so soon we will tack to the north, where conditions though maby colder should be a lot more comfortable and get us to san fran as quickly as possible for warm baths, beer and champaign

While some may say that Team Gold Coast has had their fair share of bad luck this trip I would tend to agree with them. This race is the longest and hardest leg of the entire round the world race and we have defiantly had our fair share of challenges. Not only do crews and equipment have to face constant upwind battling in over 30kts (though the wind did die off to 20kts today and the sun came out and it felt like heaven!) but we are also enduring very cold surface and sea temperatures, that are lowered by wind chill. It is so cold on deck that spending any more than an hour on deck at any one time is almost unbearable. Down below the boat is like a washing mashine that has not completed its cycle, and constant shamming and drying does little to help the condensation buid up. On this leg everything is hard and there is little reward. The reward will come at the end for years to come. The reward will be something that the Team members of Gold Coast Australia will be proud of for life. The reward will be to say that we raced across the Northern Pacific in winter and it was bloody hard but we survived and won!

LAT 38 12.2N
LONG 168 46.1E
DTF 3470nm
ETA 4th April 12

WEATHER WIND 030@30kts, Sea Rough 3m, Swell NE 4m, Cloud 7/8 Cl,Cb, Baro 1018

The wind continues to blow hard maintaining an amazing sea scape surrounding the boat of throthing whitecaps, breaking waves and spray as we continue under storm trisail, storm jib and staysail towards the scoring gate and San Fransisco. The wind has not been as strong as expected, though may pick up a little tonight and hopefully we will see it moderate enough tomorrow to enable me to climb the mast and re-assemble the track.

We do not carry tools on-board or rivets big enough to fix the track so In consultation with the tech department we have devised a way of hopefully lashing the track to the mast. The difficulty is going to be joining the two tracks together at the top and I am hoping some self-tappers will do the trick.

The constant strong winds plays havoc on the rig and sheets, and today our staysail sheet just snapped in two, allowing the sail to flog and taking four
spinlock jammers away with it in the process. Each spinlock jammer is 290 pounds,
and for every 300 pounds spent = 1 point, so in one splitting moment we have lost 4 points which go’s to show how easily they can be lost as opposed to how hard
they are to win. At this rate we should be first to the scoring gate giving us 3
points which will help pay for some of the damage, but overall I am not too happy about the situation which now can not be helped. It seems that our plan to stay safe and not push the boat on this leg is not paying off as we appear to break less when we sail her harder.

Our watch system at the moment basically consists of 2 watches that are further
broken into two halves. A minimum of three people are on deck at all times while four more people stay below dressed and ready to go if required in an emergency. This system allows crew to rotate between the cold harsh conditions on deck and the not so cold conditions below. This system may not result in the best sail
trim or the boat sailing at its optimum speed, however conditions at the moment do not warrant this type of sailing, and for crew to get sick or exhausted at this
stage of the race could be disastrous. To win you first have to finish, so until
conditions abate we will maintain our rough weather watches, keep the storm sails up and push on. One could say that “life is not about waiting for the storm to
pass but its about learning to dance in the rain” I would say however that it is a darn sight easier and more fun to dance in a hall on a warm summers night. Once the conditions improve, then we will re-commence racing to win.

LAT 38 33.9N
LONG 164 57.1E
DTF 3630
ETA 4 Apr 11

WIND 024@33kts, Sea Rough 2m, Swell NE 4m, Cloud O/C, Cb, Baro 1015.0

Gold Coast Australia has already begun to feel the effects of an intense low pressure system building to our south east. While the predicted wind this afternoon was 17-25kts we began to see 30-35kts and changed down from our Y3 to storm jib. With the wind expected to increase even more tonight to an expected 40kts I decided to set the trisail early.

As we were preparing to drop the three reefed mainsail tragedy struck as the mainsail track ripped off the mast at the second set of spreaders. The cause is unexplainable as it was only blowing 30kts at the time. Luckyly we had the trisail all ready to go, and we now have it set below the broken track and maintaining good speeds towards the scoring gate.

I will look at mast track repair when conditions abate further, and hope I have the gear onboard to fix it, otherwise it will make the mainsail re-hoist very interesting! For now GCA is all tucked in ready for the storm, and Im off to bed to get some sleep before conditions get really exciting.

Richard Hewson

LAT 39 09.5
LONG 161 58.7
DTR 3750
ETA 04 Apr 12

WEATHER WIND 010@12kts Sea Mod, Swell Variable 2m, Cloud 4/8 Cl, Baro 1019.0

Gold Coast Australia has had another good 24 hour run as the wind has begun to abate and we race towards the scoring gate. Yesterday evening the winds began to abate and seas calm down a bit allowing us to change back through our sail inventory and decrease the amount of reefs to the point that we are now sailing again with a full mainsail, Y1 and Staysail.

This morning the wind died out all-together and for most of the day it has been very variable. Normally we would find this very frustrating, however, with the sun out and blue skys it was a welcome relief from the strong winds we have had over the past couple of weeks and it allowed us to not only dry some kit on deck but do some maintenance to get the boat ready for the next blow.

Included in the maintenance was the job of repairing our spinnaker pole which I managed to shorten by two feet and then using an existing sleeve already inside the pole re-sleved it. Up until now we have been hesitant to use the spinnaker or pole out the Yankee while running down wind as we did not want to break our one and only good pole, now the second pole is fixed we at least have more options.

Sheets, halyards and sails are also being checked and we have found more chafe than we have previously experienced throughout the race. We were able to find the cause of the problem is a loose electrical wire casing inside the mast that may be rubbing on the halyards internally inside the mast. Halyards have that were chafed have been re-spliced and some anti-chafe applied and hopefully they will last until we get to San Francisco.

The forecasted conditions are not exactly desirable and I have been spending a lot of time looking at the best and safest route and options to deal with the weather and prepairing the boat for the worst. Once all the preparations are done, sometimes all we can do is wait and hope that the punishment is not too severe.

LAT 38 34.9N
LONG 157 41.5E
DTF 3940
ETA 4 Apr 12

Wind 295@28kts, Sea Moderate 1m, Swell W 4m, Cloud 4/8 Cb, Baro 1021.0

Gold Coast has had a brilliant 24 hour run of over 280nm, in one 6 hour period we averaged over 14kts, which for a Clipper 68 is about as fast as it gets! Consistency and speed have enabled us to break away from the rest of the fleet, extending our lead to over 70nm from 33nm this time yesterday.

Whilst conditions are near freezing at night, the crew are dealing with the cold well, taking regular breaks down below and making copious cups of tea to keep warm. A few crew have even taken to keeping hot water bottles inside their foul weather gear while on deck to keep warm.

Whilst our nearest human inhabitants are over 70nm away, we have been joined by other friends, as schools of White Sided Pacific Dolphins come and play with us as we surf down the waves. Their agility and co-ordination makes us look slow and uncoordinated. At one point we had a group of 6 dolphins all jumping in unicen at our bow while others played alongside the boat. A beautiful sight and sign of friendship from our aquatic comparisons.

As the low pressure system to the north of us moves away the wind and sea are abating. At the moment, conditions are too gusty to risk hoisting a spinnaker as we only have one pole to last us to San Francisco, hopefully by nightfall we will have the spinnaker up to make use of the remaining wind we have left and make some good ground to the east before the next low develops to the south of us as we race towards the speed gate at 170E

LAT 37 39.6N
LONG 152 45.1E
DTR 4256

WEATHER WIND 294@30kts, Sea Rough 2m, Swell E 10m, Cloud 7/8 Cl, Baro 1009.6

The last 12 hours Gold Coast Australia has had a blitzing run in extreeme conditions,
averaging around 12 knots over ground as we surf down monstrous seas in high winds. One
wave stood up so steep that as the bow dropped into it it looked three times the size of the
yacht. It must have been at least 30m high at as Gold Coast took off down the wave everybody braced themselves as the speed increased to over 22kts.

The record run should have allowed us to make back some miles on the rest of the fleet after
we were stuck in a back eddie of current for about 12 hours and unable to make more than
8kts. Since we got out of the back eddie and the wind picked up we have been havign a brilliant run.

The wind has only just started to abate and veer around north of west allowing us to now
sail almost due east and hopefully start to make some miles to the east and even to the
south again before the wind dies out as we try to position ourselves in the best possible location for when the next low pressure builds over the next few days.

LAT 35 23.5N
LONG 148 09.1E
DTR 4222

WEATHER Wind 293@30 Sea Rough, Swell NW 3m, Cloud Cl, Baro 1005.0

Its been another full on 24 hours for Gold Coast Australia as we sail in some exhilarating winds in the North Pacific Ocean and have faced a multitude of small problems.

As the winds started to abate yesterday I predicted at least a 12 hour reprieve of light winds, however king Neptune had other ideas and threw another gale straight at us. Thankfully this time by the time the wind started to increase it had veered round to our beam and we were reaching across it on starboard tack but as it continued to increase we began the familiar ritual of changing our way down through the sail wardrobe.

Putting in the reefs last night a multitude of problems occurred. Firstly a baton cam half out of the sail and was in danger of ripping the mainsail. While Annalise Nelson prepared to go to the end of the boom to recover the batten it popped out and was held there by the 1st reef. Some quick thinking and a nicely timed lull allowed us to winch in the boom and recover the batten from the deck. Then we realised the topping lift had chafed through in a most unusual position. At about the same time an intense electrical storm approached us quickly, giving us a awesome light display and showing us the power and fury the sky has to offer.

The long nights (it always seems to happen at night) have been wearing me down as I am on deck for every sail change and manoeuvre to help out and ensure that any problems developing are solved quickly before we suffer any gear breakages. Each evolution takes around 1-2 hours from start to finish, and with about 4 or 5 evolutions per night I have been no sooner getting my head down but I am called on deck again for another evolution or to check some approaching weather and make a decision (which normally involves another evolution). The crew have been fantastic trying to get me to sleep whenever possible, and during the daytime I normally manage to get a few solid hours in to catch up, consequently I am becoming a bit nocturnal. I do love the thrill and excitement of yacht racing however when sailing at these latitudes in such quickly changing weather it becomes very exhausting not to mention stressful as a skipper of a yacht in the Clipper Round the World Yacht Race.

As the winds continued to veer we gybed onto port tack and a few hours later we were blessed with another light spell allowing us to replace the batten and re splice the topping lift allowing us full function of the mainsail again. We were also able to shake a reef out, and we now enjoy some exhilarating sailing down wind surfing at speeds up to 20kts with rays of sunshine lighting up the beautiful ocean around us giving us some breath taking scenery.

Whilst it is still windy and the surrounding sea still boiling with wind and white seas, our angle of sail makes it a much more pleasant place to be, especially when the sun is shining. The mood onboard today is nothing but triumphant, happy and proud, as it should be after the past few days of rough weather and the fact we have nearly completed one third of the race so far.

Unfortunately the wind has now veered a little too far and we have about 1.5kts of counter current which we need to head north to get out of so we are re-analysing our tactics and sail plan for the best option available.