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Posts tagged ‘news’

Dec 20

Winter holidays

This autumn has passed unbelievably quickly, it’s holiday season already! It’s crisp, nice and sunny in London, we even got snow a few days ago.

Time flies when you have lots of things to do, and fortunately efforts bear fruit too. One of the recent professional highlights is that the paper I co-wrote a month ago has been accepted to conference proceedings in California. We will travel with my colleague to speak in Usenix SustainIT conference, San Jose, CA, in February 2010. Before the conference I will be busy setting up our project website The Green Switch, where the paper will be made available for the public. The site should be ready in the end of December.

My clipper training 11-12 starts in the end of February 2010, and there’s a lot of paperwork to be done before I will be allowed to step on board. For example a medical report and accident & travel insurance are mandatory for all participants for obvious reasons.

Clipper race 09-10 news: Team Finland has won their third race from South Africa to Australia! The clipper fleet will spend their holidays in Australia, and then carry on racing towards Singapore right after the New Year. Excellent effort guys, enjoy the break!

The photo is taken in Finland, where it gets to -25 C degrees during the winter and windows freeze into beautiful frosty patterns. Sometimes I think people who haven’t experienced a proper winter (and I’m talking about temperatures from -10 to -30 Celsius degrees) have really missed out something very beautiful. Frosty eyelashes, tiny snow particles glittering in the air, amazing brightness of the snowy field/lake on a sunny day, the warmth of the indoors and the melting feel you get after spending hours on the snow, and with some luck – the beauty of the northern lights can be seen below Polar Circle.

Nov 14

Victory for Cork in South Atlantic leg of Clipper 09-10

Press Release: The jubilant crew of Cork, Ireland, has arrived in Cape Town after taking victory in Race 3, the South Atlantic leg, of the Clipper 09-10 Round the World Yacht Race. They crossed the finish line in Table Bay at 1638 local time (1438 GMT), accompanied by a pod of dolphins surfing down the face of the waves.

The Irish team, led by skipper Richie Fearon, has led the race for the last six days, working themselves into an unassailable position to claim their first win of the 35,000-mile challenge of a lifetime.

Team Finland has scored their third podium finish in as many races, finishing in second place. The team, led by Helsinki-born skipper, Eero Lehtinen, crossed the finish line in Table Bay, Cape Town in pitch darkness and heavy seas at 0028 local time (2228 UTC, Thursday 12 November).

Team Finland arrived just ahead of Uniquely Singapore who finished at 0159 local time (2359 UTC) and did not let up the pressure on their rivals throughout the closing stages of the 3,300-mile race from Rio de Janeiro.

During the early stages of the race Eero admitted they were finding it hard to get back into their rhythm after the stopover in Rio and Team Finland had to fight all the way for their points in this race.
“I’d say half way was the hardest and then we came quite nicely through and the end was actually amazingly easy overtaking the last couple of boats,” he said. “At the start our tactical choices were not brilliant – we were playing the very conservative middle ground, not going either way very much and, to be honest, we were looking at Spirit of Australia quite a lot. When we split away it was a very good move going south so we left them and never looked back. Twenty-nine points out of 30 isn’t bad – we just have to work out how to get the scoring gates right then it’s nearly perfect!”

Uniquely Singapore arrived just behind Team Finland. An exhausted Uniquely Singapore skipper, Jim Dobie was very pleased with his team’s performance. As he stepped off the yacht onto the pontoon at Royal Cape Yacht Club he said, “We’ve got the taste for it now – you don’t want to let go when you get the podium places. It was a hard fought battle and a tough race. Fast and furious – superb! We had two slightly disappointing races to begin with but now we’ve clicked and we’re back into it. The team feels like a racing team now and we’re definitely going to keep our place up the top.”

The rest of the ten strong fleet, including Jamaica Lightning Bolt, Hull & Humber, Qingdao, Spirit of Australia, Edinburgh Inspiring Capital, Cape Breton Island and California are due to finish in the next few days and are all expected in Cape Town by Sunday afternoon.

The whole fleet will move to the V&A Waterfront on Friday 20 November where the yachts will be available for public viewing. The race will restart on Sunday 22 November, the yachts departing the V&A at 11am for start of the race from Cape Town to Geraldton-Greenhough, Western Australia, at 2pm.

Photo: Clipper Ventures PLC

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If you’re in Cape Town, make your way to marina. Say hello to crews for me.

Aug 28

The Clipper Round the World Yacht Race 11-12 route (subject to change)
1 Comment

News: Legs 1 – 5 confirmed!

Sleepless nights are over! My contract is being processed right now in the Clipper Race headquarters, and I can safely say that I will be sailing at least to China.

Just to recap the route:

  • Leg 1: UK – Western European port – Brazil
  • Leg 2: Brazil – South Africa
  • Leg 3: South Africa – west coast of Australia
  • Leg 4: West coast of Australia – New Zealand – East coast of Australia
  • Leg 5: East coast Australia – Singapore – Qingdao
  • Leg 6: Qingdao – West coast North America
  • Leg 7: West coast North America – Panama – New York
  • Leg 8: New York – Canada – European Port – UK

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