After the race start and a short triangular course just of the beach in Da Nang the fleet made their way northeast through the South China Sea. Shortly after the start the weather conditions decreased, as we had the wind right onto our nose yet the currently flowing in our directions, creating short steep waves. The first waypoint was around 12nm north of the Paracel Island, which we had to avoid because of well-known reasons. For the first week the life on board has been a real challenge, as we were not only on a constant heel of 45 degrees, but the slamming into the waves crashed you into the mattress in the bunks, after having been lifted up and experienced a slip second of no gravity. These were probably the worst conditions I have experienced so far, especially because this lasted for at least four days in a row.
During the night of March 4th we finally saw land again, as lights of the southern tip of Taiwan appeared on the horizon. This is always a special feeling – seeing land again after days at sea – since you then realise how large the world actually is. To our surprise the wind gradually decreased and punished us with no or even negative progress for nearly an entire day. Since the sails were just flogging, we decided as a team to keep us busy and entertained. After some brainstorming we came up with a staysail (smallest headsail) hoisting competition (who could do it the fastest), a swim race around the boat and some halyard swings alongside the boat (see picture on the left). This definitely was a enjoyable time and as it distracted us from the usual repetitive life on board.
The further north we got, the more we could feel a change in the temperature. It took only one night for the temperature to drop by more than 10 degrees, forcing us to change our shorts and T-Shirt for warm base and mid layers. During the following days the temperature kept dropping, which made it nearly impossible to stay up on deck for more than two hours. Therefore, we introduced a new watch system which would each of us enough time down below to warm up, if you felt like an ice block after 1,5 hours up on deck.
On March 7th the wind started to pick up again and the grip files (weather information we receive every 24h) showed that we would be battling with around 50+ knots of wind and big waves. In the following days we permanently had at least 40 knots of wind onto our nose, forcing us to only fly the staysail with three reefs in the main. The peak of the storm was on March 9th, when we were hit by gusts of 60+ knots. Luckily we survived the night with not damages, as our running backstay (pulls the mast aft) broke during the sunrise. Credits to three crew members of mine, who did an amazing job of repairing it in only 20 minutes.
As we entered the Yellow Sea, we much more often saw Chinese fishing fleets around us. Even though we were warned that they might cause problems to
us, I did not expect to sea that many. I would not be surprised, if there are not any fish left in the Yellow Sea. At one point we had more than 30 fishing boats around us, which were trailing
long lines or nets or placed their nets wherever they wanted. On top of that, they did not even have an AIS (Automatic Identification System – shows the boats around you on the computer), thus we
constantly had on person on the radar. Thus, the sailing felt more like a slaloming through all the boats and nets.
At the end we crossed the finish line in the late afternoon on March 11th and scored a 6th place – our best result so far. However, since Qingdao had prepared a big welcome ceremony for each team which had to take place during daylight, we had to spend another night at sea and were only allowed to arrive the next morning. Since the wind was freezing cold, we decided to minimise the number of people up on deck, allowing each of us a decent sleep. The amazing welcome ceremony definitely made up for the slight disappointment we had the night before.
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