Jamaica Lightning Bolt arrives in Port Antonio

Jamaica Lightning Bolt has sailed into her home port after a fast and furious race up through the Caribbean from Panama to Jamaica. The fleet slowed to a crawl as they rounded the island’s most easterly point and were caught as the wind died away, the last 25-mile stretch of the race taking almost six hours for the leading boats to complete.

Spirit of Australia and Hull & Humber were locked in battle for line honours, with Cape Breton Island and Team Finland nipping at their heels. Line honours were eventually claimed by Spirit of Australia as they crossed the finish line at Port Antonio’s distinctive orange and white lighthouse at 1546 local time (2046 GMT), just three minutes and 50 seconds ahead of Hull & Humber, who score their first podium finish of the Clipper 09-10 Round the World Yacht Race campaign. Cape Breton Island was third to cross the finish line at 1558:19 local time (2058:19 GMT), 12 minutes and 19 seconds behind the leaders.

Jamaica Lightning Bolt was the fifth team to cross the finish line at 1707:29 (2207:29 GMT).

“We’re a bit disappointed we didn’t win the race to our home port,” said skipper, Pete Stirling, “But we finished fifth and we said at the outset that our goal was to finish in the top five in every race and we’ve achieved that.”

This is the third time the fleet has visited the Errol Flynn Marina and there was a colourful and noisy reception for all of the boats with drummers and dancers waiting on the pontoon to welcome the teams to Port Antonio.

As he was greeted on the pontoon and handed a bottle of Red Stripe beer by Jamaica Tourist Board’s Deputy Director, Jason Hall, Pete said “The welcome here has been great – I didn’t expect there’d be all this going on!”

Spirit of Australia’s skipper, Brendan Hall, said, “That was the closest race we’ve ever had. A bit of a recurring theme – just like La Rochelle where Hull & Humber pipped us by a similar amount going in there.

“This was interesting because we were only doing five knots so it was this very slow motion kind of game; the die had already been cast where these boats, with just a small amount of inertia, were just creeping slowly across. It was just chess of the most intense variety. We didn’t relax until we crossed the line because at any moment the spinnaker could have collapsed and it would have been so easy to go from four knots to zero and then someone else just with a little zephyr goes past you. So we didn’t let our guard down right until the end.”

Hull & Humber skipper, Justin Taylor, said, “I’m very happy. We worked very, very hard for this one. It was a straight line, there were no tactics involved, it was straight at the line and it was about who could sail the boat the best. We almost had them, we were in the lead for a while coming up the eastern side of the island. They took an inside course, I went a little bit further offshore and three and a half minutes was the difference between us. We were gybing the kite like madmen playing the angles, they just went dead downwind. We went for speed and covered a little bit more ground but if we’d have just followed them it would have been a procession. We almost got them – there’s another five races so we’ll get them next time, definitely.”

As the yachts are now racing under the IRC rating system to take account of the differences between the Clipper 68s and Cork, a Challenge 67, the teams now face a nervous wait until the Irish boat crosses the finish line and times can be adjusted according to the handicap rating.

With almost 200 crew on board the ten yachts, others who have arrived to take up their places for the last leg back to the UK, which starts in Jamaica, plus friends and families visiting crew, Port Antonio is set for a busy few days.

The race is contested by people from a huge variety of backgrounds and from more than 30 nationalities, who put their everyday lives on hold to compete in the 35,000-mile challenge of a lifetime on board one of the ten stripped down 68-foot ocean racing yachts. Among the crews are taxi drivers, nurses, housewives, lawyers, chief executives and engineers.

Since leaving the Humber on the northeast coast of the UK in September last year they have raced across the Atlantic twice, the Southern, Indian and Pacific Oceans, faced mountainous waves, vicious storms, days of flat calm in the Doldrums and extremes of heat and cold, so a few days to relax in Port Antonio will be very welcome.

Each Clipper yacht is entered by a city, region or country and sponsors use the event to showcase themselves to the world. On the last running of the Clipper Race, more than 212 million people worldwide followed the adventure through television, print media, radio and online.

Jamaica’s involvement in the Clipper Round the World Yacht Race is another element of the country’s strategy to put Jamaica on the map by using sporting events, their sporting heroes and sporting facilities to show the world that they may be a small island but they are a nation of sporting excellence.

The fleet will leave Port Antonio for the start of Race 10 to New York on Monday 24 May.