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Canadian skipper has his boat in the lead in the 40,000-mile Clipper Round The World Yacht Race
How does a three-week, 40,000-mile sailing race around the world sound to you? The Clipper Round The World Yacht Race is a strenuous one (and the world's longest ocean race), to be sure, but it's going awfully well for Vancouver-born sailor Eric Holden and his crew thus far. Holden and the crew of the Henri Lloyd are atop the race standings heading into Race 5, which started Tuesday and runs from Albany, Western Australia to Sydney. They pulled that off thanks to an impressive second-place showing in Race 4, which ran 5,000 miles from Cape Town, South Africa to Western Australia. Holden and the Henri Lloyd were just 27 minutes back of leading boat Great Britain on that leg, giving them the overall lead in the point standings ahead of Race 5. Here's a video of them in action in the Southern Ocean:
What's ahead for Holden and his crew? Well, here's what he told the race site on what he expects from this fifth leg, which covers the 2,150 miles from Albany to Sydney:
Eric Holden, skipper of Henri Lloyd, at the top of the leaderboard, added: “It is a shorter leg than what we are used to so we feel we can push the boat harder and faster, and keep up the pace all the time.
“It will be good warm up training ahead of the Rolex Sydney Hobart Race which will be useful for everyone. We have new crew so it will be a good chance for them to gel ahead of the race. The forecast is not the same as the nasty storms we had in Leg 3 and the conditions are more suitable so we are hoping we won’t have to worry so much about things we did in the last race.
“It looks like there will be high pressure fronts for most of the race, but it will be cold as we go south of Tasmania. We won’t be changing anything about what we have done already, but we certainly won’t be relaxing as we are only four points ahead of GREAT Britain in second place so we must not lose focus as those points can be lost very quickly.”
That sounds like a challenging endeavour, especially when you consider that Holden's team just added a new crew member. Holden and his team did well to stay out of an early Race Five collision that damaged Great Britain and PSP Logistics, though, so they're off to a good start. Still, this leg won't be easy, and 10 further difficult legs lie ahead afterwards. We'll see if Holden and his team can hang on to their lead going forward. It should be fun to follow.
