Our most politically-correctly named destination yet, DLD has given us a fantastic welcome. Not just in terms of arrival; but (far more importantly) in the attitude of the people we’ve met here. Taxi-drivers, barmen, and Gerry on reception at the Guildhall have all been extremely positive about the impact of Clipper on the city.

Our arrival is rolled into the Foyle maritime festival, an agglomeration of food tents, craft bits, watersports and music all strung out along the bank of the Foyle. Its role in uniting and lifting the city is easy to see, and it can’t be a coincidence that it falls over the dates of the Orange order and Apprentice boys marches. These divisive celebrations have been relocated outside the city: instead of angry men celebrating a three-hundred year old battle there are small children waving balloons and, maybe, wondering what it would be like to sail across an ocean.

Cold, is what it’s like. Though Atlantic crossing number three wasn’t too bad, in the end: warm until we turned north and left the Azores high pressure system, and then a definite nip in the air as we started running into the low pressure systems that spin across the Labrador Sea and suck up cold air from the North Pole. As expected, it was a quick crossing; in fact, it was no surprise to anyone apart from Clipper who responded as they did in Leg 5 (and as Sir Robin himself promised they never would again) by extending the race because Derry ‘was not ready for us’.

This extension was just as much as a farce as that one, when they routed us strait down the main Hong Kong – Singapore shipping lane and then through the middle of the Paracel islands, resulting in us being escorted by a Chinese warship. 

This time Race director Justin Taylor plotted a route that would take us northwest to Rockall, east to St Kilda, and then south to Derry. Unfortunately he failed to take account of the fact that firstly none of the fleet carries charts – electronic or paper – for Rockall, which has a dangerous reef, and secondly that St Kilda is located within a submarine-training live firing area. Ash gently pointed this out to him, and the route was modified accordingly.

None of us was particularly surprised – Clipper’s customer relations is appalling; but reflects the fact that it does not regard us, the crew, as customers. Once you’ve paid your money you become the product and Clipper’s only concern is to deliver this product on time for its corporate sponsors. True, the sponsors pay around 60% of the total cost of the race; true, there’s very few return customers for Clipper to pander to; true, Clipper is the only game in town if you want to sail round the world (and you’re not an elite Volvo ocean race candidate). 

But it’s also true that only a small proportion are round-the-worlders, and there are many other companies offering single ocean crossings; moreover, many leggers sign up for Clipper out of a sense of adventure rather than a love of sailing, and there are many other adventures to be had for £8000. If Clipper continues to treat crew with such discourtesy and disrespect, and in the light of the tragedies that have marked this race, it may find itself with sponsors but no sailors.

Enough of that: visiting DLD has been a great experience, and since Garmin required very little maintenance this stopover, there’s been plenty of time to escape the Clipper bubble and explore the rest of Ireland, north and south. 

And now it’s nearly over. In 13 days we’ll be berthed in St Katherine docks, and will have come full circle. Before then we’ve a short 800 miles to Den Helder in the Netherlands, and then a 200 mile dash across the channel to Southend, and home.