Blogs

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Trials & tribulations on Qingdao 07/10/09

Two weeks at sea and Qingdao is preparing to cross the Equator. We made a tactical decision yesterday to sail through the Cape Verde Islands to try and catch up with the front end of the fleet. We are currently awaiting the latest schedule of boat positions to see if our decision has paid off or not.

We have had many trials and tribulations onboard Qingdao this past week. A week ago we made the decision to go through the Canary Islands, which is a highly risky manoeuvre. It is well known that the 'Canary Cage' can be a huge wind hole leaving yachtsmen bobbing around for days on end drifting at one knot south with the Canary current. This is exactly what happened to us for approximately 48 hours. We battled hard to get out of the grips of the canary cage and to eek out every half knot from the boat.

Helpless, we sat and watched sched by sched go by and our team slip further down the rankings. Our ultimate main aim was to reach the scoring gate situated south of the Canaries and attempt to pick up several very needed extra points. We worked so hard to get to this gate and timed our gybe across the line to perfection – hurrah! We thought we were second to cross therefore picked up two points. Bad news was to follow the next day when the skipper received an email from the race headquarters saying that Qingdao had missed the scoring gate therefore would not be picking up any points.

We were all in shock and totally gutted. There were a few tears shed for the hard work we had put in to get to this position. A team meeting followed and we lay to rest our disappointment and looked forward to pushing our boat harder to try to regain positions in the fleet. Knock after knock our team grows stronger with each one and I am sure it will pay off later on in the race. We are still only 2,000 miles into a 35,000 mile race.

Our team was to face yet another setback the next morning as my watch changed from light weight spinnaker to medium weight. I was on the helm during the hoist, with a sea making the boat rock and roll all over the place it was hard for me to keep the boat on course. At the wrong moment I was too far down wind and, as the sock opened and our spinnaker filled, within a few minutes we had a wrap around the inner forestay.

This is a disaster situation, often involving the kite being cut free and resulting in hours of repair work and sail damage points. It took us two hours with all hands on deck to free the kite. We had two people up the mast untwisting it from the top and the rest of the crew on the bow wrestling the kite to the deck. It worked though and we made the impossible possible with fantastic team work.

During this whole time I was trying hard to fight back the tears, I was wracked with guilt for causing this huge problem and other people having to risk their own well being to resolve this wrap. The spinnaker was taken down below and nursed back to health, miraculously only requiring a ten-minute repair job on some very small teeth marks. Within an hour the spinnaker was back up flying and we were sailing fast at 10 knots towards the Cape Verde Islands.

Life is busy on our ocean racing yacht, with a constant battle against chafe, sail changes and tactical decisions to be made. We have had our fair share of challenges over the past week but we are doing well as a team, the mood is happy despite some stressful times. We are still determined to get a podium position arriving in Rio. Our position at the middle of the fleet may do us well for getting through the Doldrums, allowing the front boats to indicate where the wind holes are. Two weeks at sea now, it is hot and sticky and we have no fresh fruit left. I hope we have fair winds and plain sailing from here.

Lois x