#linehonors

Comanche blasting her way into the record books. Skippered by Mitch Booth, crossed the finish line of the 2021 Rolex Middle Sea Race on Monday 25th October at 04:27:50 to take Monohull Line Honours, finishing with an elapsed time of 40 hours 17 minutes 50 seconds. . . @rolexmiddlesearace #sail #race #extreme #recordbooks #linehonors https://www.instagram.com/p/CVdx52AAJx-/?utm_medium=tumblr

So here we are in Singapore, heading off to Qingdao. It all seems so long ago now as I'm watching the day begin in New York. We motored out of the city and overnight, to make some ground up and get enough space for a race start. The insane level of shipping around Singapore means that it's not the most ideal place for 12 large yachts to fight for water at a race start. Things started falling apart quite quickly after the start. The first bit of bad news was that one of the boats had snapped its forestay - that's a bit of the rigging that we fly sails off and it's incredibly important as it holds up the mast. Snapping is a big, big deal - especially right before a race that was going to be quite nasty. Beyond that, we just had some poor sailing. We've never been able to match boats very well upwind, and the whole race here was upwind. It was incredibly disappointing to watch ourselves slip places, over and over again. We also made a couple of bad tacks, sending us further back in the fleet. More bad news. Everything got worse when we heard that another two boats had also snapped their forestays. Clipper called the race and sent us all to Hong Kong for some serious checking and replacement (they'd already sent a couple of the boats to Malaysia). Some of the boats loitered a bit, looking at forecasts and hoping for better wind. We gunned it into the city with the idea that getting to Hong Kong faster means faster repairs, faster sailing, and ultimately getting to China more quickly (for more time off). We were the third boat there. So technically Clipper has taken me to Hong Kong. We even cleared immigration for the brief three-hour stay (so much paperwork for me). The only things that happened in the city were replacement of part of the forestay, refueling, and a quick shower (for most of us anyway). We set off again that evening, motoring across various start lines while hoping some wind might show up. And it did. Quite literally ten minutes before we crossed one of the start lines the wind hit us at 25 knots. Perfect. We were off! The most interesting thing about re-starting was that we'd had a serious strategy chat as a team, and re-worked our plan for the race. Our focus was VMG - velocity made good. It's basically the measure of how fast you're going relative to the direction you want to go. Since you can't sail directly into the wind, it helps find the balance between speed and course and would give us a decent measure for calling tacks and such. The whole race would be upwind. Nobody likes sailing upwind. It's bouncy, the boat's seriously heeled over (making life very difficult), and it's just plain slow. We can only make about 8 or 9 knots max (only about 4 - 6 of which will be in the right direction). Downwind we can average 12 - 14 easy. This race was the worst of upwind sailing though (still). We were passing through the Taiwan Strait. It funnels the wind from the North down, building its strength. The real problem though is that there's a south-north current - a strong one. What this means is that the wind creates the waves in one direction and the current pushs them in the other. That's the perfect recipe for a triangular sea - backless waves. Driving on big waves is normally a game of pushing the nose of the boat up and down in an attempt to slide down rather than fall down. When there's no back to a wave you can't slide. The boat just constantly slams. On the helm we joked that we were playing wave roulette - you never knew if you were getting that backless one or one you could still drive.  Suffice to say, life was incredibly unpleasant. It was cold, wet (loads of green water coming over the side), seriously heeled over (jokes about living on a climbing frame), and horrifically bouncy. Normally when you slam on a wave there's just a moment of weighlessness where everybody braces themselves for the impact (hold on, and hold on to anything loose). With these waves you'd inhale, hold your breath, and wait - only to find that you needed to take another breath before the slam. I came down for lunch one afternoon following a nasty stint of the helm with a few really big slams (never mind the little ones). Turns out I'd bounced the entire pot of noodles off the stove and all over the galley. All over. It was a noodle disaster. The guy mothering that day was not amused by the mess, especially as the majority of it had to be scraped back into the pot and served anyway. A crew has to eat! My favorite part of this race was just having the volunteers on board from the other crews. It was an awesome opportunity to learn about the various ways other boats do thing (and likewise for them to learn about us). Everybody shared tips and tricks. We're still doing some of the things they suggested, and I know a couple of them have said they do a few things we suggested. We are all racing against each other, yet Clipper really is a race about people and cooperation. We certainly did our best to integrate the guys in, making them feel welcome and part of our team. The real point of praise was at the end of the race, when one of them moved permanently from his old boat to ours.  Safe to say, we're not winning but we are a very happy boat; we work incredibly hard and we've been dealt a bit of a bad hand. All the joiners came from boats with full crews - this was their first time sailing with the bare minimum of 12. And all of them said how incredibly difficult they found it. There's nothing easy about racing shorthanded. One even said his boat only had a handful of people that could possibly make it in the environment we lived in. It was all very validating to hear. And you know what? We did an awesome job. Having such a skilled crew (nearly all RTW) meant that we weren't managing expectations about the physical work or living on board. Every single person knew what they were getting themselves into, and still wanted to be there, pushing the boat. The proof is in the result - we placed 4th! It looked like it was going to be 3rd, but DLL edged us out by a couple of hours (it was an elapsed time race). Better though? We managed to scrape across the finish second - giving us our first line honors! It's such an awesome feeling and hopefully we'll repeat it at some point.