Crew Allocation Saturday 30th April

A day that we have all been waiting for – news about our boat, crew and just as importantly, dates!

The De Vere hotel was already swamped with Clipper crew in their red jackets when we arrived at 8.30. There was a long queue waiting to have official photos taken, and some familiar faces from my Level 1 training. It was good to catch up with everyone. There was a lot of talking about allocation – but best to be open minded about it as Clipper’s decision is final!! 350 crew had turned up for the day – a record.

At 10.00 we were seated in a large room for various presentations about the race (communications, scoring systems, boat charity etc), and a talk from Sir Robin Knox-Johnston. Then it was on to details about the race route and dates.

The start will be in the Solent on 31^st July – much earlier than had been previously suggested. The race has been pulled forward to make sure that it finishes before the London Olympics start in 2012.

The route will be via Madeira, Rio de Janiero, South Africa (port not yet confirmed), Geraldton (Western Australia), New Zealand (but not Auckland or Wellington), Southport (Eastern Australia), Singapore, Qingdao, California, Panama, New York, Canada (port not confirmed), Derry, Holland (going via north of Scotland and down the North Sea), with the finish in the Solent July 2012.

There were few surprises there, but it was good to get confirmation of the race start and finish, and also the ports for my Leg (apart from the guessing game about New Zealand). We were also given approximate dates for each leg, as these have now changed. Leg 4 will be setting off from Geraldton at the start of November, almost a month earlier than I had thought, and if the race is going to schedule will be finishing in Southport just before Christmas. There is a long stopover in New Zealand for the big boat lift when all 10 boats are taken out of the water to be scrubbed off (guess who does that?) and have routine maintenance. I am hoping that we will be allowed some time off while we are there.

Next it was time to introduce the ten skippers for the race. Each of them was given an envelope with their crew names in and they had to read them out (just like at the Oscars!)

Seven of the boats have their sponsors announced (Qingdao, Singapore, Derry/Londonderry, De Lage Landen, Visit Finland, Edinburgh and Australia) and there are three boats as yet unbranded. I am on one of those – CV3. I only know one other person on my crew and that is Matt who had just been on Level 2 training with me –so we were both pleased to have a friendly face there.

After the crew announcements we were divided into our new teams to meet our skipper (Rupert Dean) and get bonding! One of the first things we noticed was that CV2 has a lot of Americans and Canadians on it, and CV6 has a lot of South Africans, but CV3 has an almost entirely English crew. When we asked Rupert if we were going to be the ‘English’ boat he said he couldn’t possibly say, but we may not be far off! So, while we all felt a bit disappointed about the lack of sponsor, we are very pleased to feel that we will be representing our very own country!

Rupert seemed rather nervous at being faced with 35+ crew he had never met before who were all hoping for some inspiration, but he coped very well! He had prepared a lot of stuff for us – a training DVD full of useful information, a set of notes, a crew questionnaire, and a pair of lucky red socks each, following in the tradition of Peter Blake, a winning yachtsman from New Zealand (http://www.sirpeterblaketrust.org/sirpeterblake/americascup/redsocks). Until we have a boat sponsor announced we are calling ourselves Team Red Socks, and getting some real team spirit going.

At about 4.00 all 350 of us were taken back to Ocean Marina for the group publicity photos. This was a fun hour or so – lots of inter-team rivalry starting already!

The photos are now on the Clipper website which has gone live for the race, with team profiles listed.

http://www.clipperroundtheworld.com/index.php/the-teams/cv3/

I was shocked to see that they have aged me by a year, but apparently it is your age at the time you sail so I am stuck with it!

Once all the official stuff was out of the way there was a mass exodus to the Pitcher and Piano bar where our crew from CV3 spent the rest of the evening. It was really good to have a chance to chat to others from the crew in more relaxed surroundings, although it became hard to remember everyone’s name and which leg they are doing!

It was a great day, but a long and tiring one coming straight after a week of Level 2 sailing. Level 3 will be interesting now that we are in teams for the race – there will be no sharing of team information with other crews!!

I hope it wont be long before I can post news about our boat sponsor and also our boat charity – keep checking!!

Level 2 training 23rd - 29th April

Level 2 training at last!
We had glorious weather, which is not necessarily great for sailing, but made the week pass very pleasantly!

On the first day I did the RYA Radar course. I am afraid to say that I came away feeling that I didn’t know a great deal more than at the start of the day. It wasn’t helped by the instructor telling us more than once that we wouldn’t be given the text book that would be useful to read, and then at the end being given a workbook to go through, but if we cant remember how to work it out the answers are in the text book! Maybe the hot weather made us all drowsy!

At the end of the day we met our Skipper Flavio (yes he is Italian!), Penny our Mate and the rest of the crew. There were 13 of us and we were on CV5 for the week – currently an unbranded boat. It was good to get onto a race boat at last, and get a feel for the size and space that we will all be sharing once the race starts. They feel much bigger and wider then the 60’s which are used for Level 1 training (but still cramped by any other standard!). In the ghetto (sleeping area) there was more space and the saloon had room for all of us to sit comfortably at the same time. The galley is still small, and cooking for 15 was a challenge, but not too bad if you are organised.

My bunk in the ghetto

The other crew were good fun, another mixed bunch – from Canada, Spain, Australia, South Africa and the UK. We all got on really well which is very important.

Flavio divided us into two watches, Port (me, Matt, Victoria, Darryn, Sylvia, Claire and Tom) and Starboard (Esther, Paul, Steve, Lora, Ed and Lynn) and gave us mother watch duties in pairs for a day as will happen on the race. We also took it in turns to do engineering watch and deck watch each day so that everyone had a chance to do all the routine morning things such as emptying the bilges, doing the engine checks, getting the sails on deck and doing the rigging etc.

Flavio and Penny with Port watch - Matt, Darryn, me, Sylvia, Victoria, Tom, Claire

As there was not much wind forecast and the idea of Level 2 is to improve our skills at various manoeuvres Flavio decided we should stay fairly local for the week. We spent a couple of nights at East Cowes marina and the rest back at Royal Clarence Marina in Gosport (the home of Clipper). We sailed out to the east of the Isle of Wight past the Nab Tower most days and out to the west past the Needles into the Channel one especially non-windy day when we were trying to do some spinnaker practice.

Now, the spinnaker is an interesting thing! They look so lovely and graceful flying in front of a yacht but the reality is rather different. I am sure it will seem better with practice, but they are confusing and awkward to rig up, hard to keep flying well (we didn’t really have enough wind to be fair), and when you take them down they are the size of a tennis court so there is a huge quantity of fabric which has to be stuffed down below so it doesn’t blow over the side (it is thin, and billows easily!). Once it is under control the job of tying it up properly (wooling, as it is tied with wool) so that it will fly correctly next time starts – there must not be an

y twists in it. This is time-consuming and difficult as the spinnaker is longer than the boat and there is no room to spread it out at all. As you can tell, it rapidly went from ‘Ooh the spinnaker’ to ‘Oh no, the spinnaker’!

The spinnaker flying (briefly)

During the week we had lots of practice at tacking, gybing, putting in reefs, shaking them out again, headsail changes, Man Overboard recovery, and not to forget the hilarious Hat Overboard rescue, which was accomplished in a proper professional manner!

Flavio in charge - Esther ready to collect 'Bob' our MOB, with Tom and Paul watching

It was very good to be able to go over and over some of the drills, so that things start to become second nature. By the end of the week we were working in our watch as a group with Flavio only having to give an occasional reminder.

We had very long days – coming in to the marina at 8.00 one evening after 11 hours sailing, then having to put the boat to bed, have dinner, and still Flavio insisted on giving us a lecture. We were set free at 10.30 – barely time to get to the bar for a drink. We teased Flavio about it, but it was good that he was very thorough and made sure that we covered everything in the syllabus properly.

Still smiling! Trying out another hat!

Of course at the end of the week there was the Royal Wedding, and we couldn’t get away from it, even on a Clipper. Victoria was on mother duty that day with Paul and they had gone out to the shops the evening before and bought special supplies. They were not allowed to fly the tea towel as a flag, but it had pride of place at our special bacon butty breakfast. We had wedding stickers which either flew off or became stuck all over the boat (cleaned off later I must add), wedding biscuits with our mid morning tea, and strawberries and cream after lunch. We managed to listen in to the vows while sailing along the Solent on our way to Southampton, which is where we ended the week on Friday.

Royal Wedding breakfast is served!

We moored in Ocean Village Marina on Friday lunchtime as we all had to be at Crew Allocation on the Saturday. There was lots of anticipation for the next day, but first of all came deep cleaning of the boat – thank goodness the sun was shining, although it made the below decks jobs pretty sweaty. We were soon done, Flavio was as thorough with his debriefs as he had been all week, then it was off to get ready for our crew dinner at the Platform Tavern.

It was sad to be at the end of another great week, good company again and more Clipper friends, but lots to look forward to with Crew Allocation the next day…………