It was the ‘Big Blue Canoe’ with the eye catching Eagle down the side and a boat song that would make even the most conservative soul on the planet tap their feet. An entry that caught the imagination of everyone that saw it and skipper Jan Ridd and his crew took their sponsors proud message and made it sing right around the world. Two first place positions and an overall 3rd place podium meant it was a job well done. In the latest in-depth interview with each of the skippers, Clipper’s Marketing Director Ian Dickens caught up with Jan Ridd back in Gosport.

CV: The Cape Breton Island boat design turned a few heads, didn’t it?

JR: I remember when it came back from refit with the eagle emblazoned down the side and it was, like, ‘Wow!’ Before the race, wherever we went, people would come alongside, film it, take photographs and wave. It’s a brilliant design for a boat.

CV: It must have set the mood for your team right from the outset.

JR: Yes. I think all the crew, the moment they saw it, took great pride in the boat and had a desire to be a part of it, which made my job a lot easier.

CV: So back at crew allocation, you not only met your team for the first time, but also the sponsors in the form of the incomparable Lauri Taylor. Is having that sort of enthusiasm from a sponsor a double edge sward – their expectations being so high?

JR: It can be, but not with Lauri. We had a great relationship from day one. She spoke to the crew and we met for dinner in the evening. She was great, right the way through and never too demanding.

CV: So how do you set out your stall? It’s a difficult one isn’t it, because while you are a skipper of a boat and what you say goes, your crew are paying customers and they have a set of expectations that you are going to have to deliver. How do you deal with that?

JR: It is quite strange. Standing in front of my crew for the first time was probably the scariest part of the whole race for me. You had one chance to get it right and that first impression really counts. I think I upset quite a few of the crew because my background is in the hospitality industry and I was always taught that the customer is always right. As far as I was concerned, the crew was the customer so my job was to provide the product for them to embrace. Some of the crew were upset that I wasn’t standing there saying ‘win, win, win!’ I told them that it was not for me to drive the boat, it was up to them. It was for them to drive it as hard as they wanted. I think that didn’t sit too well with them to start with, but once the race got going and they realised how a race boat worked, I think they started to appreciate my approach. And it clearly worked, because as the race developed our results just got better and better.

CV: There was a very definite feeling that this was a very happy team right from the outset.

JR: That was one of my goals right from the start. I have been lucky enough to have been around Clipper for a while and know a lot of the skippers from the 05 and 07 races – and indeed previous races. You always model yourself on the skippers you admire and one of those I admired most was Jamaica skipper Simon Bradley from the last race. It was very noticeable at the end of his race in Liverpool, his crew were smiling and they were still on board two days later – we almost had to physically carry them off! But I saw other entries come in and as soon as the lines were on, the kit bags were coming off. To me, that didn’t seem right. This was their moment and all they wanted to do was run away, Simon’s crew didn’t want their experience to end, so who got it right?

I said, that was probably the biggest box that I had to tick – that the crew were happy the entire way round and I think we achieved that.

CV: The fact that there were lots of familiar faces on the delivery back to Gosport says a lot, doesn’t it?

JR: I was overwhelmed that we had such a take up. Not only that, while the race is now over and the work here is menial, the crew have just got on and done everything needed without me having to say a thing.

CV: Does it feel like 10 months or 10 years since you left here?

JR: It’s really strange. If you asked me that question in Cape Breton, Ireland or Holland, I would have said its been a long ten months, but the moment we were coming back in to Portsmouth Harbour, it felt like I had been on a weeks training course. There were times around the world that it felt like 10 years but for now, it seems like yesterday.

CV: You are a familiar face to Clipper and you have been closely involved with the training of these guys. Did the race itself deliver any surprises?

JR: Yes! The first race down to La Rochelle was a nightmare for me. Working as a training skipper, you are very conscious of keeping things safe and doing things slowly. Suddenly you haven’t got that option as everyone else is pushing so you have to push too. The pressure of doing that 24 hours a day takes its toll. Also, I surprised myself at how much the little gains and losses really matter and it’s an emotional roller coaster. You have to learn how to deal with that but the biggest surprise to me was how much it matters.

CV: Let’s go back to Hull. There you are on stage with that fantastic boat song playing and 150,000 people dancing along to it. How was that?

JR: Hull was amazing. When we left, they gave us an incredible send off but they managed to top it when we came back. Hull was a complete surprise to me – we all have preconceptions but I found it a wonderful, vibrant city and I’d go back just to visit.

CV: Did you find the attention awkward. You teach people to sail and before that, you were a publican. How was the media spotlight?

JR: It was very awkward to start with and not something you slip in to easily. Simon Bradley said it would become second nature and that I would soon slip in to dealing with it. Also the training you guys gave us on those media training days stood us in very good stead. If you don’t make it a big thing, then it’s easy. The last time I was really surprised was in Cape Breton when I was asked to do a TV interview. I said ‘no problem’ and went down to the dock. All of a sudden, this man pushes me in to shot and I said ‘what on earth are you doing?’ when someone else whispered ‘it’s live!’ No one had told me that, but we just got on with it.

CV: So down to La Rochelle. Where did you finish on that one?

JR: 4th which was exactly where I wanted to be. I did have a game plan not to start winning from the off, which surprised the crew. Winning straight out could be the kiss of death unless you want to carry that pressure all around the world. So 4th was exactly right after a great race down – Hull to La Rochelle in three days was amazing.

CV: That was an inherited fourth wasn’t it. The race committee penalised Hull & Humber and Cork and I remember that feelings were running high amongst some of the skippers.

JR: At the end of the day, the race committee have a hard job to do. Everyone was new and emotional but if the two boats broke the race rules, then they had to be dealt with. Some thought the penalties were not harsh enough but they were what they were, and I just accepted them.

CV: In La Rochelle, the Membertou tribe came to visit you and performed their smudging ceremony. How was that?

JR: There is something about that tribe that the crew took to their heart. There are ancient trading links between La Rochelle and Fortress Louisbourg in Cape Breton and the tribe’s chief came over. The boat was blessed and so were the crew. I thought it was just a media stunt but when I was taken below from my personal smudging, I actually felt profoundly moved by it. From that moment on, I realised how supportive the tribe were and they have become great friends throughout our campaign – it was their chief that christened the boat the ‘big blue canoe’ and that stuck.

CV: The other benefit of representing Cape Breton Island is you got to eat Lobster all round the world!

JR: It’s one of their chief exports and they did a great job in promoting it in just about every port. We got used to eating Lobster that’s for sure! You remember that dinner in New York where out of the seven courses, six of them were Lobster based? Superb!

CV: How was your first ocean crossing to Rio?

JR: We came fourth in that one as well. It was a perfect result after a very hard race to Brazil. We were lucky in several areas. I had briefed the crew about the Doldrums and we were all ready for it but actually we weren’t delayed at all. And while some of the others got stuck in a wind hole at the Canaries, I could see it developing and made the bold decision to go on the inside, close to the African coast and picked up the trade winds there. That set us in good stead and we pulled quite a gap on a lot of the fleet. The gate shut behind us – four of the fleet in the South Atlantic and the rest stranded in the Doldrums behind us. Coming down to Rio was sheer agony though and the last 100 miles were painful – we were actually going backwards at one point and the crew weren’t ready for that. The frustration, combined with the heat and tiredness made it a hard, hard race.

CV: On to a pretty feisty South Atlantic and the race to Cape Town.

JR: It was a bad race for us. We came out of Rio, it was quite windy and I think it was the first real upwind sailing the crew had done on the race. There was a lot of sickness but we were happily amongst the fleet until it split, with some diving south. I looked at it and said ‘I think they are going too far south and the ones to the north are going to get screwed because there’s no wind so we’ll stay between both packs’. Ourselves and Spirit of Australia were sailing along nicely and then all of a sudden, we both spent two or three hours in our own personal hell with no wind at all. Then, within sight of us, Spirit of Australia got breeze and sailed off over the horizon and we were stuck there for another six to seven hours. It put us behind the fleet by some considerable distance. If you don’t catch a weather system, you will never be able to catch up with the one ahead and it’s a hard thing to say to your crew after just a few days of a three week race ‘we are not going to catch them up’. But I think it was good for the crew because we got away from the racing and just enjoyed the sailing. It was the best sailing of the whole trip for me – we had the blue canoe screaming along and at one point, we hit 28 knots. Having the pressure off brought the crew closer together and while it’s a strange thing to say, coming 9th did us a lot of good.

CV: How was it when you arrive in to such iconic settings – Sugar Loaf Mountain, Table Mountain and so on?

JR: I wasn’t too taken by Rio but coming in to Cape Town was great. You can see the land from a long way off and as you approach, that famous skyline reveals itself. We were two days later than the rest of the fleet but several local boats had come out to greet us. It was a beautiful evening with a lovely sunset and was very special indeed. We would have been 10th if California hadn’t had her steering problems but we were happy to accept 9th.

CV: How was the Southern Ocean?

JR: An interesting one. The Commodore of the Royal Cape Yacht Club was on my boat one afternoon and he gave some useful advice. He said when you set sail from here, don’t tack. Keep going south and as the wind curves, go with it, even though the temptation will be to tack north. We did that and went the furthest south of the fleet – down to 47 or 48 degrees but we never got the associated winds. The weather system was not behaving as it normally would but we were doing really well and leading the fleet when we ran out of wind. It’s a cruel game sometimes and we ended up sixth. As we approached Australia, there was a ridge of high pressure which made all the fleet bunch up and we ended up having a 500 mile sprint to the end. I remember coming in to Geraldton, it was very bizarre as there was a big bush fire and the smoke was so thick it was like fog. We had good winds – 35 knots on the beam and we were screaming in to a port we didn’t know in low visibility, there was a maze of Cray pots to contend with, so all in all, it was quite an interesting arrival.

CV: It was a warm welcome, wasn’t it?

JR: Geraldton was amazing. I think all the smaller communities that hosted stops outshone everywhere else. Geraldton really went to town. Bruce, the Commodore of the yacht club was an absolute legend. I’m not PC at all and neither is he. What a lovely man and we wanted to adopt him as an honorary crew member. I’d love to see him and Sir Robin on stage together with a few drinks inside them. It would be a comedy act that you would pay good money to see!

CV: Up to Singapore. You were up ahead when all the drama broke out behind you.

JR: That was a very interesting race because it was so varied. We had a lovely sail going up the Indian Ocean towards Indonesia under spinnaker. We all got to Indonesia about the same time and then the wind died. You could see all 10 boats in a long line and it was just a lottery on who would get the breeze first. We were lucky, along with Spirit of Australia and Jamaica Lightning Bolt, we got the breeze and flew through the Sunda Straits. It was an amazing day as it started with us drifting and I let the crew have a swim. Then as the breeze came, we went through all three kites from the lightweight to the heavyweight and in 12 hours, we had used every sail we had. We carried that breeze right up to Gosong Mampango and we all rounded it quite safely. I had my most qualified and experience crew doing the navigation and we gave it a two mile berth in some very difficult conditions and the three of us were match racing all the way to the finish. I tell you, 10 miles to the finish, I had no idea if us, or Spirit of Australia would win and in the end, there was 10 minutes in it.

CV: But you won!

JR: Yes, our first yellow pennant – in fact our first pennant of the race. It felt a little bit hollow after what happened to Cork but I think it was a victory well earned – when it all happened, we were already a good 30 miles ahead of the fleet and I don’t think we would have been caught.

CV: You did a very elegant arrival in to Marina at Keppel Bay with the fenders coming down at the last second and it looked very smart. So there you were, on the floating stage and spraying the champagne. How was that?

JR: We had no idea what was awaiting us and the reception and the size of the crowd was amazing. That will be one of the moments that the crew will remember for the rest of their lives – it was a really good day.

CV: How was your race up to Qingdao?

JR: Another interesting race and its ‘thank you Mr. Bradley’ for your routing advice. We took his route, going a long way east before heading north. Both us and Hull & Humber seem to be following the same tactics and it paid dividends. Just short of Taiwan, we ran in to some heavy weather – it wasn’t particularly windy but the seas were very short and sharp. We reefed down to storm sails which let the fleet catch up but I make no apologies for that – safety should always come first. Then we caught a storm just north of Taiwan on the continental ledge and that was the most worried I was during the entire race. I have never seen seas like it and the boat was just going airborne. That was the night that Team Finland lost her rig and our boat was launching herself off the top of waves. I decided to shut things right down for around seven hours as there was no way I was going to push it. For me, that was the worst leg weather wise. I was constantly aware that it could turn nasty and also we had to worry about shipping and the fishing fleets up there. It’s somewhere that will test a professional sailor to their limit and it’s not somewhere I would chose to go sailing again.

CV: And you finished in 6th place?

JR: Yes. It was very close and we were in sight of other boats right to the end. With these boats, if you are on the same tack, it’s very hard to claw the miles back.

CV: So you arrive and get dressed as a giant tiger, which seemed to amuse your crew!

JR: Surreal! What a moment. We were held off Qingdao overnight where it was cold, foggy, wet and miserable and everyone was pretty tired. Then we get called in at 7am and the first clue were the fireworks going off. Then we spot thousands of people and we got herded up on to the stage where they dress me in a cape and a tiger hat. I’m standing on stage, looking at a 40-foot high poster of myself and there is total fervour from everyone. I’m standing there, still half asleep, thinking ‘what’s going on?’ It was strange moment for sure.

CV: When you came in to Qingdao, your team looked really smart. They had the blue jackets, maple leaf woollen hats and it looked like a really smart equipe. Was the something you demanded?

JR: It didn’t come from me at all. I think as the race developed, the crew realised what their role with the sponsor was. Little gestures like that can make a big difference to the coverage the sponsor gets. We had Carol Reed on board who was very switched on with PR and media and she was organising everyone to make sure we all looked the same. One of the Canadian leggers had brought the hats and of all of the pictures taken of us around the world, the ones from Qingdao look amazing. We were smart and we looked the part.

CV: Then the mighty Pacific was next to contend with.

JR: Yes, I guess the Pacific is the story of the whole race really. It was a strange one – we had to go back down through the South China Seas which was quite easy compared to how it could have been. We were so lucky because I knew it had the potential to turn really nasty. Everyone I had spoken to said as soon as you are through the channel to the south of Japan, get away from the coast as fast as possible. You are tempted to go north and take the favourable current but I was told ‘go east, go east’. We missed out on a storm at that point but we were hit by lightning in a thunder storm and lost all our instruments. I was within half a mile of a container ship with another one close behind in zero visibility when that happened, so quite a stressful moment. I rewired the whole nav station overnight just to get things working again. Going east and we ran in to our first bad storm – the one in which Piers on Hull & Humber broke his leg. Spirit of Australia and us were told to stop racing but in the middle of a 50 knots storm, there wasn’t much we could do. We stood by for around four hours and we were then stood down because Clipper had worked out a plan. We carried on racing and I asked Joff for redress. He replied asking me to consider what sort of time was reasonable but when I looked at it, I realised that even when we were standing by, we had gained 60 miles on the rest of the fleet, so we didn’t bother. From that point, we were ahead of the fleet the whole way and our lead got bigger and bigger.

CV: And then that huge storm hit.

JR: I was looking at this huge low developing above us and was thinking ‘that looks nasty’ and every day, it was getting worse. The race director did say ‘this looks bad and you should all try and head south’. By this time, we had a 200 mile lead and I plotted that we had 100 miles to go south to be in comfortable conditions or 240 miles east to get the other side of the storm. I said to the crew ‘we sail hard for the next 24 hours and average 10-12 knots and that will be just as safe as going south’. We pushed hard, got ahead and as I said to the crew ‘you are now not racing other boats, you are racing mother-nature’. Eventually, we made it, the storm headed north and we were 500 miles ahead of the nearest boat. We actually arrived in San Francisco before the race team!

CV: What a great moment to arrive under the Golden Gate Bridge in first place.

JR: There are a few iconic things I wanted to do in sailing. One was to sail under the Golden Gate, one was to sail in to New York and the other is to sail under the Sydney Harbour Bridge. I’ve ticked off two so I supposed I now need to go and do the Sydney-Hobart.

CV: I remember Carey Dunn, the TV producer of the series we are making, interviewing the crew as they got off and it was clear that they had been through quite an adventure. There was that slightly startled look on their faces that said ‘that was tough’.

JR: I think if you interviewed any member of the crew or skippers from any of the boats, they would all say that was the hardest part of the race. I don’t think I ever felt that we were in any real danger and we were in control of the boat throughout but there were moments when I was thinking ‘this is bad’. This is as bad as bad gets. I’ve got 30 years of sailing experience and I have been out in storms before, but nothing like that. For my crew, some of them had only a few weeks experience and had never been out in anything worse than a Force 4. But they were, at 2am, getting their foulies on and standing their watch. Amazing! We had one lady, Ruth,  who got washed over the side and I thought ‘there we go, she’s going to lose her confidence, but no. Four hours later, she was back on watch and doing all that was asked of her. Some people say this race is about ‘ordinary people doing extraordinary things’ but there is nothing ordinary about those people. It was unbelievable what they went through.

CV: At what point in the race did you feel comfortable in being able to go to your bunk and have a decent kip?

JR: Never! That storm stretched from Alaska all the way to Japan and Canada. It covered the entire Pacific – it really was the perfect storm. But when the winds dropped back down to around 40 knots and it was clear that we were sailing comfortably, I slept the last three or four days and never really came on deck. The crew sailed it. At one point, I was down in the saloon with the watch and we were fully kitted up and someone said ‘do you fancy a cup of tea’ and I said I’d love one. I sat there for a bit and said ‘where’s that bloody tea then?’ and they said we threw it away 20 minutes ago because you were asleep. But I still really fancied a cup, so I stood up and the next thing I knew someone was tapping me on the shoulder saying ‘you need to go to bed’. I had been asleep standing up for 10 minutes! Prior to that, I had not been to bed for 8-9 days and its amazing what adrenalin can do.

CV: How was your race to Panama?

JR: That was a really funny one. We broke our spinnaker track early on so could not fly a kite or a poled out headsail. I took my eye off the ball, we overshot one of our gybing points by quite a few miles and that put us in 7th or 8th. We made a temporary fix and flew the spinnaker in all sorts of unconventional ways –fair play to the crew as they pulled back quite a few miles. It was a hard race and the last bit was so hot with very little wind. We were a bit further out and found some current which helped create a bit of apparent breeze. The current wasn’t on any chart and it proves that there is a massive amount of luck involved on long distance racing.
Coming out of Cape Town was a great example of how random things can be. There were us, California and Team Finland in no wind with our sails just hanging down. Team Finland was in the middle of us and I could have thrown something on to the deck of either boat. We were all struggling and all of a sudden, Team Finland just leans over and sails off over the horizon. Me and Pete Rollason were just looking at each other saying ‘how does that work – the guy was in between us and he got this incredibly selective breeze. It’s a really cruel sport sometimes!

CV: How was the Panama Canal?

JR: Odd. Our pilot told us to anchor in the lake and while other boats rafted up to us before going on, our pilot never reappeared. We were there for over 40 hours but it did mean we could host several parties!

CV: How was the race to Jamaica?

JR: Very good. We carried a really good breeze all the way up to Jamaica and everyone was on the same tack with nothing to choose between all the boats. Then it got quite fluky and Justin on Hull & Humber taught me a lesson in match racing. I have no embarrassment in that and we lost fair and square after playing cat and mouse for around eight hours. Whatever I did, he countered it and I was getting so frustrated, in the end I tacked away because we were slowing ourselves down. Justin deserved his 2nd and we were happy with 3rd.

CV: You enjoyed New York, didn’t you?

JR: It was a revelation. I had all sorts of preconceptions and everyone I met was amazingly friendly and relaxed. I was very impressed and I am definitely going back

CV: And then the big one in to Cape Breton.

JR: That was a lot of pressure on me and the crew. We needed a result and it was a very hard race. We fell back early on but we worked hard, came back up through the fleet, having some very close fights with other boats. When we rounded the corner, we were red lining every kite we had because we were pushing, pushing, pushing, We had to. We came right round the corner with 10 miles to go and the wind dropped out completely. Fair play to my crew, we had three boats maybe 100 metres behind us and they worked and they worked and they worked. We pulled out maybe two miles as they tried to catch Hull & Humber and Spirit of Australia ahead of us. It was the hardest I had seen the crew work and I just sat at the back watching them, not saying anything. Sail changes, tacking, seeking any advantage at all – they were doing it all. Elisa was working so hard just to try and get the lead but we finished third which in the end was a good result. Going up the river was amazing. There were people all along both banks, with cars hooting their horns and they were there just for us. I think the locals were proud to be a part of our adventure and our efforts on their behalf.

CV: And what an epic start under spinnaker when you came to leave.

JR: The professionalism of all the skippers was amazing. We had sails overlapping and booms and spinnaker poles across each others deck. Everyone was so cool and it was so under control. At one point I could have stepped across on to Spirit of Australia and what was so amazing was the calmness of everyone. Once we got out in to open water, everyone was pushing their spinnakers ridiculously hard. There was one lovely moment when we are flying the heavy weight kite and we watched four teams blow their medium weights in an hour! You do feel kind of smug when the other boats sail past you pushing hard and then watch their sails explode and you get the place back again!

CV: How was Kinsale and Cork?

JR: Kinsale was an amazing place but when we arrived, I couldn’t see a thing. It was that heavy, misty rain and I didn’t even know I had crossed the finish line until they told me. The yacht club there did a great job making us so welcome and I think the crew would say it was one of the favourite stopovers – they had a great time there.

CV: You were second overall leaving Cape Breton. What happened after that?

JR: We had all sorts of problems with our main sail across the Atlantic and our poor result in to Cork put us level overall with Jamaica Lightning Bolt, so it was all to play for in the final standings – it was much tighter than we needed.

CV: Ultimately, there you are back in Hull with a third place podium position. That’s a heck of result to be proud of.

JR: That’s more than I ever dreamt of Ian. Going back through the 360 souvenir magazine and it lists all the results from previous races with names I really revere from my early days in sailing. People like Tim Hedges, Colin de Mowbray (God rest his soul), Jonathan Bailey. Some of these people are now my employers and I have looked up to them in my sailing career. I have looked up to them and now I’m up there with them – better than some of them and I think that’s nothing to be ashamed of. At the moment though, it doesn’t feel like a massive achievement. I remember saying to Hannah at the end of the 07-08 race ‘well done – you came 3rd’, to which she replied ‘no good – I wanted to win. And while this result is better than what I expected, now I wished I had pushed harder because I know we could have won’.

CV: How do you sum up your team?

JR: How can you sum them up? They have been my friends and family for the last 10 months. We had moments when we hated it each other, but I would never choose to do that race with anyone else. They have been through great times, there has been adversity but they have always, always come out on top. I think I was lucky to have easily the best sponsor in my mind and I think I was lucky having easily the best crew. It was a perfect marriage.

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