The first time that I heard about the Clipper Round the World Race was in the winter of 2016. We had come to the UK just a few months before and I was travelling in the London Tube when I saw one of these ads which I am sure you have all seen, those which show a face and half of it is the normal everyday image of this person while the other half is the same person in full weather gear in a sailing background. I find those ads incredibly beautiful and powerful, a real work of genius. When I got back home I took at look at the Clipper website but somehow I got the (wrong) impression that this was something reserved to an elite of people and that it would be almost impossible to get in. So I more or less forgot about the idea, just kept it in the back burner as one of the myriad of things that we all archive as something that interested us.
Then, just before Xmas 2017 I was in the train going to Gatwick to fly back to Spain for the holidays and I was reading a complimentary magazine provided by the train company when I saw another ad for the race. I remembered being interested about it and decided to take a new look. This time I spent much more time looking at the information (I must have read every single word in the web site) and when I finished I was convinced that this was something that I wanted to do, that I could do and that I should do
I mulled over this during the holidays and, when we returned home, one night that we were sitting in bed, I told Puri (my wife) about this, explaining what I wanted to do and why I wanted to do it. When I finished I asked her if she thought I was crazy by trying to do this and she told me: "You'd be crazy if you did not go for it". So, since the beginning I've had her full support and I could not be more grateful about it.
I did not want to join the 2019-2020 race for two reasons: first I thought it was too early to be fully prepared, both physically and mentally, and second I felt that my son Leo would still be too young and I preferred to wait until he was a bit older. So I decided to go for the 2021-2022 race. I contacted Clipper management and asked them when would if be possible to apply for this edition and they told me that some time in the first half of 2019, so I had a full year to wait, which has felt very long. At that point in time, the 2017-2018 race was half way through, so I started following the blogs of a couple of participants and learning more about their experience, also reading everything that I could find about the race.
Initially my idea was to do a single leg, leg 3, which to my sailing mind is like the "Everest" of sailing: the Southern Ocean, the Roaring Forties, the place where legends are made, this place we have seen the Volvo Ocean race crews battling over. But I went to a presentation in London (which was great, I recommend that anyone interested in the race joins one of these that they do around the world) and when I told people about my plan everyone told me that one leg would not be enough, that I would feel that it all ended just as I was getting the full hang of it. So, after speaking with Puri, I decided to do two legs, legs 2 and 3. In that way, leg 2 could be like a "warm up" for leg 3. We finalised our plans by deciding that she would join me in Australia at the end of leg 3 and that we would spend Xmas over there, under the Australian sun.
Initially my idea was to do a single leg, leg 3, which to my sailing mind is like the "Everest" of sailing: the Southern Ocean, the Roaring Forties, the place where legends are made, this place we have seen the Volvo Ocean race crews battling over. But I went to a presentation in London (which was great, I recommend that anyone interested in the race joins one of these that they do around the world) and when I told people about my plan everyone told me that one leg would not be enough, that I would feel that it all ended just as I was getting the full hang of it. So, after speaking with Puri, I decided to do two legs, legs 2 and 3. In that way, leg 2 could be like a "warm up" for leg 3. We finalised our plans by deciding that she would join me in Australia at the end of leg 3 and that we would spend Xmas over there, under the Australian sun.
