Knockdown

Golden Globe Race entrant Guy Waites, a former Clipper Race skipper, suffers mast failure 300 miles from the Azores

- Guy Waites

While I was skippering Dare to Lead in the 2019-20 edition of the Clipper Round the World Race, we were diverted during Leg 5 from Airlie Beach, Australia to the Philippines, just as the opening chapters of the Covid-19 story were being written.

It was while being held in quarantine on the pontoon, in early 2020, that I agreed to buy Sagarmatha, the Tradewind 35 that had been Kevin Farebrother’s entry in the 2018 Golden Globe Race.

Soon after, with the Clipper Race postponed, and having made a hasty return to the UK, I began to plan the return of Sagarmatha from Panama to her new home in Scarborough, North Yorkshire. No sooner had the plan begun to unfold than Panama closed its borders.

Fast-forward to 12 October 2020, the day Panama reopened for the first time since Covid closed them in March earlier that year. I arrived on this very day, carefully avoiding the television cameras and the women in national costume bearing baskets of fruit to mark the occasion.

I was taken by taxi to Shelter Bay Marina the following morning, ready to meet Sagarmatha for the first time.

Getting acquainted

After several weeks of getting to know one another, involving a lot of cleaning away mould with white vinegar or bleach, we were ready to leave Panama at what was the end of the hurricane season in the Caribbean Sea.