It was a busy day. Stephen and I came in in the morning to make final touches to food storage and location. We found more stuff. And at 11 am we had the crew brief of all crews about the details on the course, the weather the overruling safety instructions and some very good media footage from the legs and race before. We head out west and will run a triangular course. We will be out there until the 15th. So about 200 miles West, afterward we will turn NothNorthEast for a bit more than 200 NM followed by a SouthSouthEast course back to Subic bay. It will all start with a Le Mans start. Yes guys at home, you might not be familiar. Here is how it works. There is lead boat in the middle and half of the fleet to the windward ward side, the other half to the leeward side. This time Rich is the race start director and WTC Logistics will be the leading boat. All boats will line up under motor. Main is hoisted and Staysail as also a Yankee handed up. There will be a 10, 4 and 1 minute start sequence. At 1 minute all engines are supposed to go off. At the start signal the Stay and Yankee can be hoisted. After the start the fleet will maintain course for 10 minutes and than we start fighting.
But before all that Jazz we will need to do some sailing practice. Some of us have not been on a boat for a long long time. Line slipping for us 10:03 local. We head out to the training area. See picture above. We will do hoisting sails, changing sails, reefing, tacking, gybing, MOB weathered and MOB untethered. Once that is all under our belt and it will take a few hours in the heat, we will prepare for the start. This will be 17:00 local or 10:00 European time. You can track us http://www.clipperroundtheworld.com/race/standings. The position report will be updated every hour.
Here is the Le Mans Area and the race course again.
Obviously nothing happens without weather in sailing. So we had a wether brief. And as it looks the winds West of Lucon should be OK and not as unstable as in the last two passages of the Lucon straight. But as I can see there will be lots and lots of sail changes as the wind will vary from 1Bft to 6Bft and will shift from N to SE multiple times. We will have to work a lot and sleep very little.
And here is the wind model I am looking at all the time from start into the first two days.
Last person to speak in the brief was Sir Robin. He reminded us of safety. And he made another remarkable comment. He said when we will be out there we might be intercepted by a Chinese warship. Dont mess around. The believe they own al of the South China Sea. Other dont. But when intercepted find a person who speaks Mandarine and let them talk to the warship. Last time it eased the whole situation. Amazing! We will do Sir. He wished us well, lots of fun and encouraged us to bond to strong teams because we will for sure need it in the next race, the most difficult one in the whole circumnavigation.
After that we had a crew brief. Rich rolled out his idea and how we would play the two out of the three Ocean sprints. Cannot talk about it here it is all top secret. We spoke about safety. Showed our ability to throw a bowline, one of the most important thing in Clipper. We had to put life vests on and do the mobility test showing that we could move around the boat. Kaz as a watch leader held a watch brief, which I think was a splendid idea. After that Stephen and I went to the other supermarket, finished our purchases and went to the boat.
The final touches were done to the boat. We checked what we needed and got off what was not needed.
Stephen and I finished cooking instructions for 10 meals and sorted out the gluten free nutrition for Dean. We are almost ready to go. Very exciting. The next morning will show where we are.
Joe Sails 