Panama City was bigger than I expected and one thought I take away from both there and Colon (the other side of the canal), traffic and driving is unreal. Fear for your life or shut your eyes. Could be I haven’t been in any traffic lately and that’s my problem.
Panamanian Meal. The drink was sugar cane.
This part will mainly be photos to add to your knowledge of the race.
Radar providing us information at beginning of our match race with LMax
After a great time in Seattle, we had an amazing sendoff. Ruby helped me get all my gear back on the boat, Navy band played us going to boats, and Nancy came down and waved us off.
Tubist is not going to miss the action
Hooray! What a great way to make your entrance to New York City.
Congrats to the ClipperTelemed+ team for winning the Panama-NYC leg (Race 11), their first overall race win in the Clipper Race and second podium of the series.
The team crossed the line this afternoon (Thur June 9) after passing Garmin in the middle of the night, extending their lead to nine miles. to the finish of the race from Panama by around nine nautical miles.
ClipperTelemed+ is due into Liberty Landing Marina, New Jersey, around 6:00pm ET tonight following the motorsail from the finish line to the marina.
For round the world crew member Linda McDavitt, a former band teacher from Texas, the lasting memories of the race were those final hours battling with Garmin.
“We were ahead and then they were ahead, we were ahead and then they were ahead and finally we were counting down five more miles, four more miles, three, two, one. So it was very exciting, the countdown was really cool.”
After two consecutive podium places since leaving Seattle in April, things have fallen into place for ClipperTelemed+ on this American Coast to Coast Leg, and Linda added: “That’s the beauty of the US. The final sail up the Hudson was also really exciting, especially to sail past the Statue of Liberty because I’ve never been that close to it.”
524 years after Columbus, the Clipper Fleet made their way through the Windward Passage, the 50-mile wide, 5,550-foot deep gap between eastern Cuba and western Haiti that connects the Atlantic Ocean with the Caribbean Sea.
High-pressure systems delivered a “breath-taking vista of horizon-to-horizon stars, with the Milky Way clearer than we’ve seen for a while, and not a squall cloud in sight” according to skipper Matt Mitchell.
It’s Day 5 of the 10-day 1,750-mile sail north from Panama to New York City and ClipperTelemed+ is in third place, just eight miles behind leader Garmin. Given the favorable weather forecast, the leaders should arrive into Liberty Landing Marina on June 9-10.
Here’s a note from Linda, from somewhere in the Caribbean:
After 20 days and 4,208 miles from the Le Mans start off Seattle, the Clipper fleet has finished the Race 10 Seattle-Panama leg of their round-the-world sail and are now headed to the Panama canal after a quick stop in Cost Rica to refuel.
After making it through the canal, the fleet embarks on Race 11 to New York on 30 May.
Here’s a note from Linda just after the finish, a few hundred miles west of Costa Rica: Continue reading
Linda’s ClipperTelemed+ team is leading the pack as they head south down the west coast of Mexico, past Acapulco, with Unicef in eyesight only a mile behind.
Only 1,677 miles to Panama! The days are calmer now, compared to northern Pacific last month, with more light-air downwind days and less “living on the angle.”
This week, ClipperTelemed+ got their first Scoring Gate points, a remarkable feat given they lost a few hours after the race began to repair the mast track and had to piece together their shredded spinnaker (renamed “The Snozza” after Jane Snoswell’s magician-like sewing skills).
Here’s a text I received from Linda on Monday via satellite phone: Continue reading
Journey of a Lifetime 