After the usual sail parade and a mock start just outside the Qingdao Olympic Sailing Centre, the fleet motored around 60nm through shipping channels, in order to avoid the countless number of fishing boats and nets. Even though the area of the Le Mans start seemed clear, several boats and buoys appeared around us. Unfortunately, not all were visible on our AIS (Automatic Identification System), which promised to make the first nights of this leg quite challenging ones.

Imagine it is pitch black at night and you can only see green and red flashing lights around you, but you do not know whether a net is starting, ending or continuing at this buoy. In the end, we just head straight towards the buoys and a crew member was standing with a search light on the bow and called on which side of the buoy we should pass, just meters before reaching it. Luckily, we were in quite light winds, which meant we were not traveling very fast and thus could afford to approach the buoys very closely and only react in the last seconds. In the end, we were pleased not to get stuck in fishing nets, even though several of our competitors were caught for hours and were struggling to free themselves again. The first couple of days were a navigational challenge, however, the light winds conditions allowed everyone to accustom again to the life on board.

As soon as we rounded Japan's Cape Sata and entered the Pacific we immediately were greeted by rough weather. It really seemed as if mother nature wanted to make sure we were aware of what we can expect of the next few weeks: the mighty Pacific Ocean. The weather – 30 knots on the nose with occasional showers – did not change for about two days and the boat kept bouncing into the big waves, making the life below deck quite challenging. Imagine you are Tarzan, but instead of the vines you clinch onto the grab rails while the floor is awkwardly bouncing up and down – a truly memorable experience.

In the early morning hours of March 29^th the strong winds had slightly decreased, but just before the watch change we heard a loud bag up on deck and chain of problems started. The stay sail car had broken out of its track and thus forced us to drop the stay sail. While we prepared for repairs the helming became more and more difficult, because of the now imbalanced sail plan, and we eventually made an accidental tack. Since the preventers were now too tight too be released we had to cut both of them and the big waves did not allow us to tack back. 

Therefore, the only option was to gybe (go with the boat’s stern through the wind), since our course in the meanwhile was back towards Japan. During the gybe we unfortunately were hit by a big wave. The boat was swung around too fast and as a result, our 3^rd reefing line snapped. Due to the rough weather it was no option to go for reef 2 and, therefore, the entire main was dropped on the deck. At this point in time the whole crew was up on deck and in a great team effort we managed to secure the sail and later re-run the broken reefing line.  

After all this excitement the crew was glad that the weather calmed down during the next days, however, since we started to head further north, the temperatures dropped rapidly. More and more layers of cloth were put on and we started to split the watches into “mini-watches”, as it was impossible to stay up on deck for more than an hour.

An exciting experience during this leg was the crossing of the International Date Line, which lies exactly 180 degrees east and west of the Greenwich Meridian, thus separating the eastern and western hemisphere. We crossed the IDL at about noon on April 6th, which meant that we did not chance the watches, but instead changed the date. Therefore, we experienced the afternoon of April 5th and the morning of April 6th twice. This was definitely a strange feeling, but the crossing meant that we now were decreasing, instead of increasing, our distance to the finish in London. The life on board was not greatly affected by the IDL, since we do not follow we days, but only numbers our days from the start to the finish.

The temperatures continued to drop during the course of the next days and the rain eventually transformed to hail and later even to snow. These were with no doubt the most challenging sailing conditions I have ever experienced, as the constant cold and wet weather cost each of us huge amounts of energy. Each off-watch and dry cloth were celebrated and you were lucky, if you were able to warm up complete before you were called up on deck again for the next watch. The constant waves across the deck and the huge amount of condensation down below made sure that each item of your kit was at least damp, if not soaked. The engine from was turned into a drying room, as each of us desperately tried to dry their boots, socks, gloves, etc. before the start of the next watch. Since we now were quite far up north, we constantly were overtaken by weather fronts (common weather in the North Pacific: several small lows passing from west to east), some of them bringing no wind but rain and others with gusts of 50 knots and massive waves. As we were most of the time sailing on a broad or beam reach, we managed to achieve countless surfs with the boat. The top boat speed at the moment is 22,9 knots and I can definitely tell you that this is quite an exhilarating moment when this 35-ton boat picks up speed, the deck gets covered with spray and you only hope that the bow does not get caught in the water. Three boats in the fleet managed to break of their bowsprit while surfing down a wave. In between each low we had more or less a day of calmer conditions – 20 knots of wind with fairly flat seas – and every minute of sun up on deck was used to dry the drenched cloth. Sometimes even the sunglasses and some music made their way up on deck, which lifted the moods on the boat.