With such a short amount of time to go until the start of my Clipper adventure to Brazil I thought I would send everyone who has helped get me to the start line a quick update on how things having been progressing down at Clipper HQ in Gosport. My summer job for the last two years has been working as a sail maker in a small sail loft in Cowes on the Isle of Wight and as part of my fund-raising effort for Clipper I put together a list of ‘canvas products’ to offer the 10 boats in the race which included bunk bags, helm and cockpit pockets, boom awnings, bean bags, spinnaker socks, bow nets, cabin doors, team bags – the list goes on! I thought that this would be a good way to help me raise the extra money still outstanding for the race to Rio de Janerio in the short amount of time I had left. What I had not counted on was for every skipper in the fleet to get back to me with large orders of every product and as a result my last fortnight has been a blur of pocket and bag making, whilst somehow managing to fit in my YachtMaster Navigation and Meteorology exams at the same time! As I write I have two boats worth of PVC cushion covers to produce before we leave on the delivery to Hull on Monday morning, so there has been a lot going on!

The team I shall be part of in the race, ‘Uniquely Singapore’ skippered by Jim Dobie will have 19 crew members on our first leg to Brazil which departs from Hull on September 13th at midday. If anyone who has so kindly supported me in this project can be there to wave the fleet off it would be great to see you there. I know that the staff at International Paints who have done such a great job of providing me with branded kit will be making the journey and it would be lovely to see as many friendly faces in the crowd as possible. Our race start coincides with Hull’s Festival of Light so there should be many events going on in the run up to our departure that will make the atmosphere at the port all the more frenetic.

From Hull the fleet will power down the channel, stopping for 24 hours in La Rochelle to allow the teams to regroup after the tidal gate that exists between the Channel Islands and France, before heading back out into the Bay of Biscay and on to Brazil. Preparations for our departure have been going on all week, with 30kg of chocolate and biscuits being the first of the supplies to be loaded into the galley. Whilst I have been busy working long hours at the loft my team mates have been carrying out rig checks, hull and instrument maintenance and generally trying to preempt problems that may occur in the first leg. I am sure that we will discover many little problems in our new systems as we race to Hull as part of the Pilgrim’s Race and I will send another email update before the race starts.

I would like to take this opportunity to say a huge Thank You! to everyone who has supported me and encouraged me in this adventure. Having started off aiming to raise enough money to sail around the world, your continued support after I had to scale back those plans means a huge amount to me and I shall be sure to take lots of photographs and write reports of how Uniquely Singapore is getting along. The team can be followed through the Clipper website (www.clipperroundtheworld.com) via the onboard tracker that will monitor our progress 24 hours a day, or via my website (www.globalsail.org.uk) which will be updated each week.

I have attached a couple of photographs from the loft to show you the mass-production I have been involved with and I will email once again when I reach Hull.

All the best,

Lauren x