Ci-dessous le message envoyé par l’équipier en charge média sur CV30-UNICEF. Il reflète largement l’état d’esprit à bord de CV24-LMAX Exchange.
« It’s a race they say. And so intent are they on presenting it as a race, that Clipper PR will excise blog references to fishing and swimming and anything else they deem « un race-like ». Even though we have fished and swum and
sunbathed and washed knickers off the back of the boat, and played « Who Am I? » while helming, and a dozen other un race-like things too.
And even though we do those un race-like things, we still race. And we race to win. And such is the desire to beat our fellow boats, that often we find ourselves overpowered, at night, racing down waves on a knife-edge between
control and a crash gybe. A crash gybe that could kill one of us. And we do this for days on end, which provides Clipper with exciting material to market their next race to all of you out there who haven’t done this yet.
And then, when we’ve raced hard and made it across two thirds of the distance between New York and Derry, and we’re still pushing the boats to the point of multiple equipment failure, and we’re looking at finishing several days before the arrival window, Clipper reward us for all our hard work by extending the course we have to sail.
Why do they do this? Because « the earliest we can bring forward the required infrastructure is Wednesday 6 July ».
Required infrastructure? One imagines some clipboard wielding desk jockey who hasn’t ticked the right box early enough, saying the marina toilets won’t be safe enough for 180 arses until the 6th, and therefore it would be safer to route us around a hazardous rock that is 1.4m high with a warning light that is often extinguished for long periods due to weather damage. And if a hundred crew members stay at sea for an extra three days, that equals three hundred crew days at sea during which — for example — any one of us could be swept to our death.
It must be some pretty important infrastructure to be worth adding that additional level of risk to our crossing. That’s the sort of infrastructure I’d like to see. I’ll be looking for it when we get in.
Yes folks, after they did it to us in the South China Sea they said they’d never do it again. And now they have.
Everybody aboard is pissed off.
Until anonymous
Henry »
PS1. L’heure à bord est TU.
PS2. La prochaine nouvelle samedi, selon le calendrier habituel.
Dominique Hausser sur LMAX Exchange, vendredi 01 juillet 2016 0000 TUC