Quingdao leaving her berth in Gosport

 

Quingdao in heavy seas

Blogs

---

The Pilgrim Cup – Gosport to Grimsby Race 09/09/09

After a week of preparation time on board our boat Qingdao, it was time for us to set off on our race up to The Humber. On the Monday of August Bank Holiday all ten of the Clipper boats were ready to depart their home in Gosport for the first stage of this massive adventure. The crew were making their final checks and preparations on the boats as family, friends and VIP’s arrived to bid farewell to the fleet. After speeches by Sir Robin Knox-Johnson and the Mayor of Gosport each team was invited to join their boats down on the pontoon. Each boat one by one left the safe harbour of Royal Clarence Marina. As we departed on Qingdao, we were accompanied by our boat song being played out loud to us and our fellow rival teams waving us off. We then paraded out of Portsmouth Harbour with our Qingdao banner flag in arrow formation with the rest of the fleet. It was just amazing, the weather was fantastic and we had a flotilla of boats following behind us.

Once out east of the Solent we began to plan our route up to The Humber and split off into watch systems. We were a small crew for this trip so we knew we were going to have to work hard and would probably be pretty exhausted once we arrived in Grimsby but none of realised quite what the British weather had in store for us.

By mid week we had been enjoying some lovely down wind sailing across the south coast after having spent a day in Brighton marina for a minor repair to our steering system. As we past Dover and started to head north the wind began to build and move to a westerly direction. The forecast was for a large depression to cross us and predicted gale force 8-9. We started to prepare the boat for the onset of this weather system.

I was assigned as watch leader and was feeling pretty nervous about having this position but pleased to take it on. As the weather system deepened our barometer dropped to 975 at its lowest point. During this time we were down to our main being reefed fully and storm stay sail. We were experiencing the North Sea in its most challenging conditions. I felt scared most of the time but deep down there was a huge part of me loving every minute. I feel a huge sense of achievement to have personally coped through this weather system, but proud of our team and of our boat. Our key aim for this race was to not damage anything on the boat or for any crew to get injured.

I am sat at the navigation station in Grimsby writing this blog and decided that some extracts from the log book would probably sum up my experience the best.

“Barometer 986. Main sail reef 3. Storm Jib. Bird in starboard heads. Do not use.”
“Barometer 979. Main sail Reef 3 Storm Jib.Watch change. Manoevering between ships at anchor”
“Barometer 979. Main and stay sail. Lois gybes the boat in heavy weather, very good job”
“Barometer 975. Rough. Fully reefed and storm sail, gusts 50 knots. Tri-sail up.”
“Barometer 978. Very Rough. Proceeding with storm stay alone. Unable to get tri-sail up”
“Barometer 978. Moderate conditions. Sails down in lee of vessel. A little hairy”