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Transatlantic Record Attempt 1 Captains Blog

 Day 8

Saturday 05 June:

 Shut down, shut off, shut out!!!!

I am afraid whichever way we look at our situation we have next to zero wind and are going nowhere, let alone fast. Despite a great days sail yesterday at around 02.00hrs this morning the mighty wind gods switched the fan off for us and left us wallowing around with 420 odd Nm to the finish at lands end.

No matter how many times we look at different weather models (forecasts) or speak to Roger Badham our weather router we cannot find a way through this ridge of high pressure. When we departed NY we always knew that there was the chance of this ridge blocking the entry to the UK and we were prepared to take the risk. There are three parts in my view to a Trans Atlantic record attempt: 1) the departure 2) the middle and 3) the finish. If you can get all three in one window, bearing in mind by the time you go green (‘let’s go’) in NY and get the crew from all over the world, you are relying on weather data looking forward 9-10 days. The further you look forward the less accurate the forecast becomes – hence the element of risk! Sometimes the cookie crumbles your way and sometimes it doesn’t! We felt we had two out of the three we needed, otherwise you wait forever.

Obviously as a team we are disappointed not to have achieved our goals but have no excuses or blame on anything or anyone – we were lucky enough to have a terrific bunch of guys on the yacht who pushed the yacht to limits it has never seen and yet again this fantastic machine has come through pretty much unscathed. We had a blast with some unbelievable sailing.

 What now? As I sit looking at the computers with Hugh Agnew (navigator) we have 390 NM to Lands End and we are motor sailing in order to get there as quick as possible to get six of the guys off the yacht in Falmouth into waiting taxis to Heathrow in order to get them to their next regatta in Sardinia starting on Tuesday. We will take on some fuel before heading to Southampton and hopefully arrive around Monday night or early Tuesday morning for the remainder of the guys to fly home.

What next? Leopard will be competing in the JP Morgan Round The Island Race on June 19th followed by the Cowes – Dinard/St Malo on July 2nd , 6 weeks of corporate sailing and then our UK season closure will be the Round Great Britain and Ireland yacht race starting on August 23 (with a tracker installed) before heading off to the Med and then the Caribbean before being back in New York for the same time next year where we may just try and do it all over again?

Signing off… a huge thank you to our great Boss Mike Slade for letting the “Renegades” take his 100 foot toy for a gentle spin around the North Atlantic!! Unfortunately Mike couldn’t be with us this trip as he had business commitments during the final week of our weather window for departure from NY. Another big thank you to our long time friends and sponsor, ICAP, who have been a fantastic support and have been with us since the beginning when we launched ICAP leopard in June 2007 and last but not least a huge thanks to Louise who looks after all of the logistics, website, sales and marketing for the yacht. She works tirelessly behind the scenes to ensure that the whole operation runs smoothly & so it has been a really manic month for her!

This has been a great adventure and half of the fun is knowing so many people enjoyed following our progress. (25,000 hits and counting!!)

 Thank you,

 Over and out!

 Chris and the crew of ICAP Leopard

Day 7

Friday 04 June:

0540 Friday 4/6/10 and 687 nm from the Lizard, the last 24 hrs have been another fantastic blast on this great yacht. Surfing all day and night with our smallest spinnaker up into the early thirties of boatspeed, shame it is all just a bit too late for the Mari Cha time – never mind – we tried – gave it our best shot and wasn’t to be on this occasion.

Anyhow we now have to concentrate on the record we can get and beat – our own from 2008. We still have to keep well and truly on our toes because the wind is due to drop significantly from this evening – never a dull moment.

From our position at present we are looking to gybe shortly onto stb which will give me a sigh of relief as we hit a solid object on Port a few days ago and it took quite a chunk out of our starboard rudder (Leopard has two rudders) which has been in the back of my mind when surfing at high speeds due to the fact it could delaminate, not a huge risk at present I don’t think but all the more safer on Port Gybe so it is not controlling the boat. Apart from this small amount of damage we are pretty unscathed up until now touch wood. We have burnt through the spinnaker sheets half a dozen times due to the amount of trimming we do to catch the waves but a few minor sail repairs will see us in good shape for our next event, the Round The Island Race on June 19th.

Life on board  is pretty good – bunks are relatively dry – we all smell of roses of course not having had a shower for a week but no one notices each other luckily and with 18 crew we hot bunk ie the bloke that comes off watch gets into the blokes bunk who goes on watch – so its nice and warm!!!!! We don’t have to worry about the toilet cleaning rota as it is now Kaput  – no more toilet (thanks nipper) no more arguments who blocked it!

From all of the crew we would all like to say thank you for the kind messages on the message board. It’s great to know you are following and thanks also to everyone who “checked in” to see how we are doing. It came through today that we have had over 20 000, yes twenty thousand hits on the Leopard3 website. Thanks to the Daily Sail and Sailing Anarchy for links from their websites to ours.

Bye for now

Chris

Day 6

Thursday 03 June:

Sitting here in the nav area looking at the GPS and our plotter. The GPS says we are doing speed over the ground at 20 knots – fantastic!  It has been a great nights sail with our largest A-2 spinnaker flying, only one problem we are heading towards Lisbon!  In layman’s terms, a yacht cannot sail directly into or 180 degrees directly away from the wind, we always need to sail at an angle to the wind hence heading for Lisbon and not the UK.

The low pressure system we have been trying to ride has been very uncharacteristic the whole way across the Atlantic since the Grand Banks and yet again yesterday holding us up with lighter than expected winds for the third time this Attempt – I cant tell you how frustrating this is sitting and watching the clock countdown without going fast….anything under 20 knots of boat speed seems like we are standing still. The weather gods are not happy with Mr Leopard for some reason as we had the same problem for our last event, the Sydney Hobart Yacht Race, which was a light air event yet again! Anyway we are looking for the shift to get back onto port and hopefully more wind to sail on course for Lands End at pace.

Later

Chris

Day 5

Wednesday 02 June: (additional navigator Update)

 The statistics at the end of day 4 (at 18.45 GMT ie 4 whole days since we started)

Not very pretty today. We are moving tonight, but only at 15-16 knots, seems very slow. On stbd gybe, Good wind direction and heading ESE.

Talk in the morning,

Hugh

Day 5 (alternative blog)

Wednesday 02 June:

As a alternative to the captains blog I have been asked to put down some ramblings from the crews perspective over the last couple of days.

For a bunch of renegades this rabble has knitted together very well indeed – the mood onboard is both positive and jovial, most of the newcomers are still blown away by the fact that one of the most used and favourite pieces of electronic equipment is the toasted sandwich machine. A smile lights up a very tired face when the warm cheese and ham treats are passed around on deck – and the freeze dried has not really been touched all that much. Justin “Juggy” Clougher has been converted and is threatening to not go offshore again without one!

The mighty ICAP Leopard3 is a deceptively fast boat in these heavier air conditions, the crew who don’t really have the full on “balls to the wall” hard running experience of the Whitbread or Volvo are now also used to seeing low to mid 30′s on the speedo and find it somewhat of an anticlimax when we drop below 20kts boatspeed.

The ones with Volvo experience are laughing at just how much easier it is to hit the high speeds with a significantly less physical investment. We don’t have to grind and we are not underwater anywhere near as much.

In fact sitting on the sails stacked aft is like being at a theme park, you get the thrill of the acceleration and watch the wall of water barreling down the boat – and then just as you are preparing yourself to get hammered by the wave, it dissipates and you just get a minor spray.

Downstairs is fitting with a boat of this class – its extremely comfortable – to be honest you wouldn’t even know you are flying along downwind. Brett Jones (one of these freaks who is taller than 5ft 8) can not stop talking about how this is the most comfortable bunks he has had the pleasure of sleeping in, as for once his feet are not hanging over the end of the bunk.
This boat is ideal for the older sailor who would like the thrill of the Volvo but with the comfort of a superyacht. 

At present we are trying to negotiate the centre of the low – throwing in the odd gybe in a hope with hanging on with a chance of Mari Cha’s record – the end of the trip does not look hopeful at all as the winds are predicted to lighten off – but we are not giving up onboard.
Chris and Hugh are constantly battling with the tricky decisions the weather is throwing up in a hope to keep the dream alive……

All the best

Guy ‘Nipper’ Salter and the renegades!

Note – Chris is battling away after blocking the heads – he isn’t to happy but the crew are in tears observing the melt down!!!

Day 5

Wednesday 02 June:

At 0400 this morning we were exactly half way and equal to Mari Chas half way time across the Atlantic. Yesterday we had a few slow hours negotiating our way through a trough but we we were soon back up to speed and averaged around 20 knots throughout the night and into this morning. We are currently in 20-25 knots of wind heading towards the low pressure system looking for a wind shift due in a few hours to Gybe away to the south where we expect to maintain the fast speeds we need for the next few days – our main problem is still negotiating a ridge of high pressure when we close on the UK coast. 

Life on board pretty good, all the crew in good spirits and we need to maintain a tad under 18 knots to the finish to achieve our goal – tough, but certainly not impossible.

Bye

Chris

Day 4

Tuesday 01 June:

Wet cold and windy out here and today we said goodbye to the gulf stream which plays a major part in the weather we receive in that area. The water temp has dropped from a nice warm 22 degrees c to a chilly 9.0 degrees making every drenching on deck that bit cooler – or as they say ‘as cold as your mother in laws kiss’! Yesterday afternoon the surfing down waves was fantastic with speeds into the late 30′s and we are still doing it 18 hours later with the forecast for more wind to come which is good news for us and thankfully we can see the horizon tonight.

 As it turned out with the latest Grib files (a grib file is a folder of weather info down loaded from the internet every six hours then overlayed onto our charts so we can choose the best route with the most favorable winds for the given period to get us to the UK) we were never going to be able to hold onto the front we were on two nights ago as it moved away far to quickly for us to latch on to. So now our hopes are to stay pretty much where we are on the bottom of the low for a long down wind slide to the UK – the tricky part will be the end with not a great deal of wind. That was always the case even when we left NY and we will have to do our best to deal with what eventuates when we approach.

In answer to a question on the message board – ICAP Leopard cannot get Mari Cha IV’s record as she did not have power assisted sailing systems and we do. We only use the Mari Cha time as a bench mark in an effort to improve on our current ‘power assisted’ record for monohulls. I cannot think of a non power assisted monohull that is capable of beating Mari Cha’s time afloat today and I believe that record will stand until someone builds a purpose built yacht with manual winches which is not practical for anything other than these types of records.

A few people have asked what the significance is of the word “Alfie” in front of the Leopard bow logo. On April 5 2010, dear friends of Leopard, Greg and LA Norwood Perkins, tragically lost their six year old son to meningitis in Antigua WI. Alfie was a beautiful little boy and into ‘everything’ as well as being my godson. We thought it would be nice for all of Alfie’s friends, their parents and teachers from West Hill primary school in the UK to follow our adventure across the Atlantic in dedication to his short but wonderful life.

Chris, Captain

Day 3

Monday 31 May (additional evening update):

We are moving well this evening and are well hooked into the back of the low pressure system which is just off Newfoundland. Wind is NW 28-32 knots. Very cold as air coming down from the arctic and the water temp is only 8 degrees. A few hours ago it was 24 deg when we were in the gulfstream! Our average boat speed over the last few hours has been 22-23 knots.

The latest model runs show reasonable agreement with our route running more or less along the direct track from here to Lizard. At least that means that most our miles sailed now count towards the Lizard. We are just passing 2000 miles to go and should pass 1/3 of the way in the next few hours.

Below a summary of the first two days:- 

(Run is run through the water, CMG is run made good along the course)

So in for a long night of running/reaching with A5/J5 and reefs in and out of main. Boys are doing a great job.

Hugh, Navigator

Day 3

Monday 31 May:

Yesterday was a pretty tough day! We always knew it was going to be to stay up to pace with the front we were riding to try and stay in the stronger SW wind. All day it was reef in, reef out, squalls, change spinnaker according to the wind and sea state due to the fact we were also in the gulfstream. (ie a large river of warm water that snakes along the USA eastern sea board and runs up to 6 knots from South to North)

It is very frustrating sailing trying to make decisions on sail plan to keep the boat rolling along safely but fast. In the early hours of this morning we went back to our A-5 spinnaker for a period but the drivers could not distinguish between the sea and the horizon as we had no moon or stars just as black as the inside of a cow! We were surfing along at 35 knots and decided to reduce sail as it was too risky. Right now we are on the north side of the front in a much better sea way in 20-25 knots of wind making good progress towards the UK with the odd surf up into the 30’s but generally sitting on mid 20’s. Not exactly where we planned to be on the race course but we have to deal with our circumstances and see how it all pans out.

The guys are doing a great job and four hours in the bunk after a fire hosing on deck for four hours goes pretty damn quickly especially after last night where we had all the crew on deck for eight hours changing sails etc… I am sure a few more hours sleep would not go astray but life on board is not too bad. Our freeze dried food is pretty good for freeze dried food and we have a toasted sandwich maker on board as a treat to supplement the FD food – the ham and cheese toasties are hard currency out here as they are not an endless supply!!

Will keep you posted…

Chris and The Leopard Crew

Day 2

Sunday 30 May:

Normally Sunday is a day of rest, not here on Leopard! We are sailing along nicely in around 20 knots of wind and doing the same in boat speed which is OK for now. We are positioning ourselves where we want to be for when we get more breeze which should build throughout today to around 35 – 40 knots and then slowly decrease back to the mid 20’s by tomorrow evening. Our plan was always to ensure we got away from NY in the first 12 – 18 hours which we have done, the next 36 – 48 hrs is all about keeping the boat sailing fast and safe not to break anything.

The crew are all into the rhythm of four hours on and then four hours off down below to eat and sleep, the temperature is quite warm at around 12 degrees Celsius.

Chris and The Leopard Crew

Day 1

Saturday 29 May:

Here we are just 15 miles past the start line on our record attempt to become the fastest monohull sailboat across the Atlantic.

It is great to finally get going! It’s a massive amount of work to get a boat like this ready and to be in ‘standby mode’. Whilst in standby mode we continue to service and maintain the yacht, a never ending task, even with seven or eight full time crew.

Then there’s the logistics!! Moving race crew from literally all corners of the world to New York at very short notice whilst having to overcome airline strikes, flight delays, missed connections (& even the odd ash cloud!) takes a lot of work – a big well done to Louise who looks after this side of things. The only problem encountered was one missing bag – Guillermo’s – he needed to make a quick decision between retrieving his bag or making the connection following a delayed first flight and he chose the flight! Luckily we had some spare kit for him to use for the trip otherwise he would have been very cold!

We have a fantastic crew on board for the ride all of whom all committed to the task in hand! Just ask Justin ‘Juggy’ Clougher…..he started a 180 NM yacht race on the maxi ‘Rambler’ from Connecticut on Friday lunchtime, finished at midday today (Saturday), got into a USMMA RIB ( thanks guys) that went from Connecticut, via the east river, all at 35 knots to arrive with us at Ambrose light at 14.12hrs only 30 minutes before our start. He just came by the nav area and said he had better ring the wife and tell her he wont be home tonight!

The conditions are OK at present although we are not up to record speed just yet (currently averaging 17 knots). The wind is due to lift us and strengthen over the next few hours however and we can then get our A-5 spinnaker up and hopefully be well above record speed by the middle of the night.

I hope you will enjoy following our adventures over the coming week…

Chris and Crew