Celebrating in New York and preparing for the last leg.

NewYorkPrizeGiving

The Unicef team have been celebrating their third place in the PSP Logistics Panama Cup from Seattle to Panama. It is not just celebration and relaxation, the teams are also preparing for another ocean crossing to Derry-Londonderry in Northern Ireland.

 

Leg 7 consists of two races; from Seattle to the west side of the Panama Canal and from the east side to New Jersey (New York). Unicef achieved a third place in the “LMAX Exchange Race of the Americas”. There are some pictures of the New York prize giving event on the Clipper Round the World website.

The teams are filling the boats with all the necessary food items to reach Northern Ireland and the victuallers are the crew members that do all the shopping and planning which is often a huge task. Although it will be much easier to find the required food items compared with finding food in some of the other stop-overs, the sheer task of transporting it to the boat remains the same. Victuallers often rely on hired mini-vans, suppliers delivering and friends and family of crew lending a hand. But the IchorCoal victualers commandeered the New Jersey fire department to help with their shopping and transport. Cheeky but cool!

One of our Round the World’ers Drake Forney tells about his journey around his home state of Texas and the feeling of being home after months at sea. This is a nice article about Drake’s 37,000 mile journey, so far. He is getting married later this year and what a change that will be for him.

Next week, on Monday 20 June, the Clipper Race fleet will set sail for three-time Host Port Derry-Londonderry in Northern Ireland in the 3120 nautical mile LegenDerry Finale from New York. The race across the Atlantic is the final ocean crossing of this tenth race edition and the Derry-Londonderry stopover is renowned among Clipper Race crew for the warm welcome and party atmosphere, hence the LegenDerry Finale name for Race 12.

Derry City and Strabane District Council has built the award-winning Foyle Maritime Festival around the fleet’s arrival with an array of activities and events planned to ensure that the very best of the city is showcased to the tens of thousands of visitors.

The first boats are expected to arrive around 7 July and the festival itself will run until the departure for Den Helder, The Netherlands with a spectacular finale planned.

Let’s hope my Unicef team are doing well enough for another podium place.

Till next

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