Clipper Race "One of the Most Remarkable Challenges" for a "Rank Amateur"

Clipper Race "One of the Most Remarkable Challenges" for a "Rank Amateur" - Connemara Participant

28th December 2023

Connemara sailor Paddy Moran enjoying sunshine and smiles en route to Cape Town in the ClipperRound the World Race

Spare a thought for the Clipper Race participants who spent Christmas Day at sea and hope to make it to Newcastle, Australia for New Year’s Day.

“Rewarding, but really, really tough” is how Connemara sailor Paddy Moran (34), on board Ha Long Bay Vietnam, describes the contest, speaking to Afloat before setting out on leg 4 of the 2023-24 race from Fremantle.

Moran, who is a camera assistant on television productions, is originally from Dublin and moved to Ballyconneely when he was eight.

Having taken up surfing, kayaking and swimming, he said he “thought I had been around the sea all my life, but I was really only dipping my toes in”.

“There are a good few Irish on my boat, some of who are staying for the entire round world route and others who are coming and going,” Moran said.

“We have had some wild conditions, but it was all downwind sailing and surfing in the last leg (leg 3), and we just had to beat upwind for the final mark,” he says.

Ha Long Bay Vietnam is currently leading the fleet in leg 4 on the 2,500 nautical mile route to Newcastle.

This leg dips further south and rounds Tasmania, giving crew another taste of the Roaring Forties before racing up to New South Wales.

“The start was tough in the Bay of Biscay, and we had been making big mistakes at critical moments on the earlier legs, but the crew is definitely more fluid now,” he said.

“I have managed to drop two cameras over the side before we crossed the Equator, so I am down to a couple of GoPros and my phone for images,” he says.

“It is one of the most remarkable challenges you could find at sea as a rank amateur,” Moran said.

Initiated by Sir Robin Knox Johnston, the Clipper Race provides an opportunity for those with no previous sailing experience necessary to sign up for an intensive training programme and 40,000 nautical mile race around the world on a 70-foot ocean racing yacht.

The route is divided into eight legs and between 13 and 16 individual races, including six ocean crossings. One can choose to complete the full circumnavigation or select one or multiple legs.

Published in Clipper Race

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Clipper Round The World Race

About The Author

Lorna Siggins

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Lorna Siggins is a print and radio reporter, and a former Irish Times western correspondent. She is the author of Search and Rescue: True stories of Irish Air-Sea Rescues and the Loss of R116 (2022); Everest Callling (1994) on the first Irish Everest expedition; Mayday! Mayday! (2004); and Once Upon a Time in the West: the Corrib gas controversy (2010). She is also co-producer with Sarah Blake of the Doc on One "Miracle in Galway Bay" which recently won a Celtic Media Award

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About the Clipper Round the World Yacht Race

The Clipper Round the World Yacht Race is undoubtedly one of the greatest ocean adventures on the planet, also regarded as one of its toughest endurance challenges. Taking almost a year to complete, it consists of eleven teams competing against each other on the world’s largest matched fleet of 70-foot ocean racing yachts.

The Clipper Race was established in 1996 by Sir Robin Knox-Johnston, the first person to sail solo, non-stop, around the world in 1968-69. His aim was to allow anyone, regardless of previous sailing experience, the chance to embrace the thrill of ocean racing; it is the only event of its kind for amateur sailors. Around 40 per cent of crew are novices and have never sailed before starting a comprehensive training programme ahead of their adventure.

This unique challenge brings together everyone from chief executives to train drivers, nurses and firefighters, farmers, airline pilots and students, from age 18 upwards, to take on Mother Nature’s toughest and most remote conditions. There is no upper age limit, the oldest competitor to date is 76.

Now in its twelfth edition, the Clipper 2019-20 Race started from London, UK, on 02 September 2019.