Back to square one

 


The 17th of March 2020 Clipper Race took the difficult decision to postpone the 2019-2020 race and this meant that our own race had to be postponed by a whole year. A little bit over one year later they have had to take the decision to postpone the current race once again, moving our race by another full year, now taking place in 2023-2024. And I am feeling like I am in the "Groundhog Day" movie, with everything repeating again and again. I am having the same feelings of disappointment and frustration that I felt last year and it really feels that we are back to square one, with the end very far away.

It was 2017 when I first learnt about the Clipper Race and 2019 when I joined. So by 2023 4 four years will have passed since I signed up and it is starting to feel like an eternity. It is hard to keep focused and with high spirits when your goal just keeps moving away. Last summer I went through a stage where I was not very excited about the race and it feels that this year it is going to be the same, hopefully I will pick up at the end of this year, the same way that I did the year before.

I had really hoped that the decision to postpone the current race could have waited a little longer and that there would have been the opportunity for things to improve enough for the race to restart. But I now understand that it was not reasonable to wait until June to decide about a race which should be re-starting in August.

Even if we feel gutted about this, I think it was the right decision. I am only glad that I am not one of the participants in the current race. If this is frustrating for us, I can't imagine what it must be for them. Well, I guess that right now the only thing that we can do is have patience and try to keep our spirits up.