He's in, he's safe, and he's only six hours from the top five boats

Funchal, Madeira Island, Portugal
Tuesday, September 25, 2007

The first leg of the 2007 Mini Transat Race was completed by Clay on Monday, September 24th at around 11:20 a.m. EDT. The leaders of this leg were about 17 hours ahead of his finish. The great news, however, is that Clay was only 6 hours behind the 5th place boat. The winner of the Transat will be determined by the total time it takes to complete both the first and second leg of the race. Six hours over 3,200 miles of ocean sailing is a very small distance between the competitors for this next leg. Clay’s good friend, Isabelle Joschke won this leg handily with a time of 5days, 15hours, 33 minutes.

We had the opportunity to catch up with Clay on Tuesday morning. He sounded great and was quite happy to be in port. He answered the question as to “what the hell happened in the last five miles?” The spinnaker halyard broke and he promptly watched four boats continue on past him while he re-rigged a second shute on the back up halyard. Other than the halyard issue, there were no big break downs and the weather was unremarkable due to the fact the race committee had postponed the start. He did describe a time on the boat with hallucinations. He was imagining that Peter from Ecover was crewing for him and trimming his sails. Clay was not aware that this is a common experience for solo sailors as the Mini Transat website described in one of their articles.

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Clay and Team Acadia crew will be working to re-fit Acadia for the second leg of the race over the next 10 days. The next start will be on Saturday, October 6th.
Most of the fleet is in port but they are still awaiting four of the series boats as of Thursday afternoon. The docks are teeming with activity as the sailors (many with “pit crews”) work to repair the boats and fix the multiple breakdowns that accompany 1,000 miles of racing. Then, if you are lucky, one can really rest before starting all over again with weather reports, sailing strategies, and provisioning.

Clay will be writing an update of his experience and thoughts before his final preparations next week. So stay tuned… we still have 3 more weeks of racing to go!

Thanks for all the support and positive energy.

Team Acadia

Great story in SAIL Magazine
Check out www.sailmagazine.com for the lead article, "Countdown to Belief" on Clay and the race. It’s a great one.

Party Regatta this Sunday
The fleet will participate Sunday in a fun regatta in front of Funchal’s port: a 10 nautical miles race with a crew of at least one inhabitant of Madeira, a rectangular route just close to the coast with a start and a finish line in front of the port. The departure will be at 1pm. Check the Transat website for updates and photos.