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Ian Dickens - London Clipper's crew have managed to echo what we all should be thinking. Few people could have expressed it better and I believe this is one of the most powerful pieces of prose I have ever read.
Colin de Mowbray
Race Director, The Times Clipper 2000

LONDON CLIPPER DIARY - Reflections after New York

In my forty five years on the planet, that was a defining week in a year of defining moments.

I lie in my bunk and look at a picture stored on my lap top taken the day before we left New York. There, smiling back at me is my family. Confident, happy, assured, at the end of a wonderful dinner in a gently lit dining room 120 floors above Manhattan.

It was taken in the World Trade Centre and the confidence of youth shines like a bright beacon from my children's eyes.

A few days later, that innocence, faith and trust had been raped and overnight, the child became tarnished with the foul and sordid problems of the world. Having been there, the abstract, for them, was replaced by raw reality and the people we touched, responded to and created a bond with, probably now lie a tragic statistic, crushed under a million tons of rubble.

Too far away, I have to try and offer support and reassurance to young minds coming to terms with a loss they take personally and who are rightly worried when the word 'Retribution' is bandied about with cavalier abandon.

I hope that my circumnavigating circle, concluding this week, might offer them a beacon of hope in a world that seems destined to self destruct on greed, jealousy and lack of respect.

And if it helps, then this year long odyssey becomes way more than a mere sailing adventure, or a highly charged sporting event.

We have sat, for thousands of hours, and witnessed the days and nights as planet earth gently breathes. We have witnessed its light and its dark. We have endured serenity, solitude, tumult and, occasionally, chaos. Its presence is total and recognises no borders, no cultures, no class or divides.

It belongs to all of us, in equal proportions and we, wherever we live, are responsible for it. Without care and without respect, it will simply cease to be.

No matter whether you are a Cuban or a citizen of Brazil or a fisherman in Portugal with your Catholic faith. No matter if your home is in Yokohama, Tokyo or Nagasaki with your Shinto temple. Irrespective of the Hinduism of Mauritius, the Anglican faith in South Africa or the Buddhist shrines in China, the world remains a shared possession. In Galapagos, they pray in a corrugated tin church and on Christmas Island an almost identical building brings the community together.

For me, the simple sight of the Southern Cross is all I need to feel secure, humbled and inspired in equal measure.

And in to those cultures, those beliefs, those ways of lives, we have stepped ashore and found new friends in the most unlikely of places.

In Hong Kong, we left a bond and a link with the Sampan drivers who ferried us ashore throughout the days and nights. In Galapagos, Ecuadorian Panama hat wearing George looked after us with all the care of an attentive Father. In Yokohama, Frank took us under his wing like long lost relatives and in Mauritius, the peddlers of tatty beach souvenirs took time out for a football kick about on the sand with my son.

In New York, we bantered comfortably with the doorman of our rented apartment and in Cape Town, the taxi drivers included us in to their lives for the few days of our passing. In the Philippines, as I walked between a poor farmhouse and a small field of mangy looking vegetables, the owner gave me a beaming smile and shouted out 'Hello Sir' as I slipped by his plot on the world.

In Okinawa, where the memory of mass destruction sits fresh in the minds, strangers are greeted warmly and the desire to have dialogue above all else, remains their eager mantra.

And in the shadow of such dastardly, foul minded, greedy deeds that have tarnished the world this week, I have seen enough hope from the last 48 weeks to know that there are enough people on this planet, irrespective of their cultures or beliefs, who are big enough and brave enough to stand up and be counted for the sake of the home we all share.

I make no apologies for not giving you a report of our painfully slow journey towards Jersey. Coming 1st, 4th or 8th in to St. Helier this week becomes deeply insignificant when the last year has suddenly justified itself with such clarity.

To my precious Holly and Michael, to baby Ben Gibson - indeed to all those young lives who will inherit the earth, I hope that my observations help, just a little.

Ian Dickens. (Dad)

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