Qingdao, China Stopover

We arrived in Qingdao on Saturday, March 12th.  As we motored into the marina, we managed to find the one rock outside the entryway and run aground.  That is the worst feeling, being minutes from reaching the pontoon and then running aground and not knowing how much longer you will have to wait to come in!  After several attempts, we finally managed to pull free and then ran aground again.  Of course!  But we pulled free of that one too and finally made it to the pontoon, where we were happily greeted by Sarah, Ralph, our sponsor, and the Clipper race officials.  We did a quick immigration check on the boat and of course, had our first beer in days, before marching up to a stage they set up while hundreds of drummers performed for us!  On stage, there were a few welcome speeches and we were each given a red cashmere scarf and a small stuffed monkey for the year of the monkey!  My mom had perviously eluded to a special surprise that we would get when we arrived in Qingdao and I knew it was the monkey the minute they gave it to us!  After the speeches, we were carted away on large golf type carts and brought over to another building where they had appetizers and beer waiting for us!

We celebrated our arrival for a bit and then finally made it back to the boat to gather our belongings and head over to the Crown Plaza to check in for the duration of our stopover.  

All in!

Ralph told us everyone was headed to Bar Lennons for the night, so after a much needed shower, we made our way over.  The bar was not too far from our hotel but considering it was freezing cold outside, we decided to catch a cab over.  We were not entirely sure the cab driver understood where we needed to go, but went along for the ride.  As we passed down one street Emily had said it should be near, I saw a bar with a light cutout of what I thought looked like John Lennon.  However, I am not one for recognizing famous people, so I wasn't entirely sure that is what the picture was of and since the cab driver kept driving, I thought I could be wrong.  Once the cab driver started making u-turns, I chirped in and said I think I saw the bar back aways and sure enough that was the right bar!  So my feeble knowledge of John Lennon paid off!

Once we finally made it in, we were greeted by the rest of the Clipper fleet for the most part who had already made it into port.  We had not had any food by this point, so headed to the upstairs area for some food.  However, we picked a seat next to the balcony overlooking the dance floor and it wasn't long before we were back down below to join in on the festivities!  We were back on the prime numbers and Matty picked 23 for the night, which I think was secretly because he wants to be on our boat and we are CV23, but we can debate that later.  After several rounds of 23 rum and gingers, the bar ran out of rum and we were none the wiser, or maybe just me as the drink changed during the night.  The band at the Lennon Bar was already expecting us and had learned each of our boat songs to sing for us!  I was also told that the owner was a previous Clipper crew member or skipper?  One of those is right, but that is probably why we were so welcomed there and it became our bar of choice for the stopover.  The only bad thing about this bar was that all the toilets were squatters!  I somehow managed to forget that part about China...but when in Rome!  After making best friends with family members of other Clipper folks and sweating my ass off on the dance floor, it was time to head home for the night. 

My new sweater which I acquired during the night! Shhh...

Sunday was back to the boat to start the deep clean and Karri and I went right to work on the main sail which we had to take down and lug over to the sail tent with the help of the rest of the crew.  Our main mission was to fix the branding on the sail since it needed to be in tact when we reached Seattle.  However, what we found was a bunch of random holes that needed patches and we had to replace most of the sliders.  So the one day job was turning into several days.  We broke in the afternoon for some food and happily made our way to McDonald's to grub on some big macs!  

Oh yes!

After a little more work in the afternoon, it was sufficiently cold enough for us to head back to the hotel and figure dinner out.  I was in the mood for some soupy dumplings so located the local Din Tai Fung restaurant and had our group set out on a mission.  What I didn't realize was that it was actually back near the marina.  So as we made our way over through the countless large malls, we finally ended up at a random dumpling place inside a mall.  We ordered most everything on the menu and I even got my mapo tofu, which is my fav!!!  I was stuffed and pooped so headed home afterwards and a few others headed back to Bar Lennons to greet the other boats that had arrived that day.

Working on the sails

The next day, we continued our work on the main sail and then brought the staysail over which was also in need of some TLC.  That night was our prize giving ceremony, so we made a quick trip back to the hotel to get ready and then it was back to the boats to meet where buses would be taking us over to the event.  Lukey picked up a case of beer for us all to drink on the way over and Tino still happened to have his mega boom boom speaker with him so in true Visit Seattle fashion we started playing some jams and belting the lyrics on the bus ride over which the lovely team of Ichorcoal had to endure, who happened to be sharing the bus with us. 

Once we arrived, the drinks were flowing.  There was a lovely performance put on for us by local kids.  There were these really cute little ones dancing like monkeys too...all very fun!  After the performance and some speeches, they did the prize giving awards and then the buffet opened for us to eat!  

Standard

Jesse loves his flowers

I should be a princess

As we were eating, someone mentioned that it was the same band from Bar Lennons performing n stage.  I assumed they would be playing our songs eventually and thought Visit Seattle should of course be the first one played so went up to the DJ guy and put my request in.  Moments later the band was playing our "Shake it Off" tune and we gathered all the Visit Seattle crew up in the front for some fun dancing!  

Pony and Matty wishing they were VS crew

Karri decided to take the party on stage, so we followed her up and eventually took over as the band made room for us to dance away up there.  After our song, most of the other songs were played and one by one, each team made their way up to the stage to have a good play.  

Karri and Huw starting the stage party

GB

The moment Matty split his pants...classic

Conga line!

Sarah showing us up!

To top the night, Huw and Wendo were in rare form dancing away with each other.  The highlight was when the Qingdao song came on, "Kungfu Fighting", they did a slow mo kung fu dance which was the most hilarious thing I had ever seen.  

Huw and Wendo

We continued the night back at Bar Lennons where we were up to 101 on the prime numbers.  I think this time, they were prepared for us and had come with extra rum on hand.  At the end of the night, we walked back to our hotel stopping for some local street kabobs and soup on the way.  I don't really remember the kabob part but Karri said I ate all of hers...whoops!

One of the many trays of drinks...

Tuesday we were determined to get through the staysail work and I think that day we also had another Seattle photo shoot on the boat in the afternoon.  We decided to all meet up for Luke's last night and met up at the Safari bar in our hotel.  

Photo shoot with our new scarves 

I should also probably mention that Luke decided he needed to get groomed before he got home to see his wifee, but I was very against this as I think Bec needs to experience the face pubes in full effect!

Don't do it!

Who is this!  He is like a 12 year old!

After much debate, we ended up going to some hotpot place that Roz picked out.  My group, Ana, Luke and I decided to catch a cab over while the others mistakenly trusted Roz to lead them over by foot.  Even after a quick stop by my room for more clothes, we still managed to beat them and were waiting for about an hour before they all finally arrived!  Safe to say they got lost along the way and got the scenic walking tour of Qingdao.  They did eventually make it though and I was down below making the food selection for everyone and drink orders.  The food ended up being quite good and it all ended up being about £10 a person!

As it was Luke's last night, he had the grand idea to go out big, but I think after we finally made it through dinner, he realized that wasn't the best idea with all the stuff he still had to do.  So a few of us made it back to his hotel room where we chilled for a bit over the worst bottle of wine, in fact, no one actually drank it because it was that bad, and some beer.  I was distracted trying to file my darn tax extension online via my phone the whole time, which I finally managed to do!  Then it was to our rooms for an earlier evening, especially for me as I was coming down with a cold.

Wednesday morning it was back to the boat to finish work on the staysail.  Luke had his millions of meetings with everyone to say his last goodbyes before leaving and made sure to stop by the sail tent on his way out.  We sure hope he makes it to Seattle to hang out with us again though!  As I was still feeling like shit, I was in much need of a low key night.  So after our work in the sail tent, it was back to the hotel for us and then I met Karri up in her room, where we ordered salad and pizza from room service and watched movies the rest of the night.  Amazing!

Bye bye Amancio...

Bye bye Pony and Matty...

And final goodbye to hobbits!  We better see you and Bec in Barbados!

Back to the sail tent on Thursday to work on yankee 2 and 3.  I think by this point, we were so sick of working on the darn sails that we were determined to finish everything that day and if not, it just wasn't getting done!  Thursday also happened to be St. Paddy's day, so the Derry team were hosting a party at the New York Bar that night.  Jan unfortunately had gotten food poisoning from something and was sick all day so only wanted to eat some western food.  We went out in search of a restaurant he found called Canvas but couldn't find it so ended up at some random coffee shop with pizza in the window.  However, they were not even serving pizza but we stayed anyway since we were tired of looking.  After that, we headed over to the party which was down the street from us.  It was an interesting bar, can't say I liked the layout of it, not well set up for dancing that is....muahaha.  There was however dancing involved, a horrible band, a back room with a pool table and a sneaky unused room behind that, and toilets upstairs, with one real toilet for us to use alongside the two squatters!  Oh, and I even made it home with a beer stein compliments of Dan!  Luckily, Pony stuck the night out with me and walked me back once the bar closed since my crew went home early or earlier.  All in all, a somewhat low key night though.

Friday was our first day off of the stopover!  Hooray!  we had so many plans of shopping to be had!  Our first stop was the eyeglasses store that Pony told us about.  Where Karri proceeded to buy three new pairs of sunglasses, I got a pair of sunglasses, prescription glasses and new contacts.  Then we were off to get toiletry items, medicine, and snacks for the boat.  Our last mission was to find a waxing salon which is surprisingly unheard of in China or perhaps just in Qingdao.  Karri was first instructed by the hotel that a salon would be down the street.  So we headed in that direction and stopped at the first hair salon place we saw thinking they might have a better idea of where to go.  No one spoke English, however, they still tried to be helpful and Karri managed to have an entire conversation about where to go to get waxed with a guy over his iPhone language converter...it was absolutely amazing!  So they told us to go one way about 30 minutes walking, but we wanted to check a little further down just in case there wasn't one really close by.  After about two minutes of walking, we gave up, but didn't want them to see us walk past again thinking, "geez, these two couldn't even go in the right direction!"  So we stopped for a coffee at some random German pretzel shop.  That ended up taking at least an hour for them to make three cups of coffee!  There happened to be one customer in front of us also getting coffee.  After our hour long break, we headed back in the opposite direction on our thirty minute trek to find this salon we were told about.

After getting a walking tour of Qingdao, we finally made it to our destination.  As we approached, we thought we might be entering a brothel, but we continued in anyway wondering what we might find on the other side.  Luckily, it was indeed, just a spa of some sort.  Again, no one spoke English, so we started the conversations again going back and forth trying to get them to understand that we wanted to get waxed.  After a while, we thought we finally had an understanding and we asked how much it would be.  When the lady showed us the price, it was around £80 for underarms....ah what!  At that point, we were second guessing what we were buying as everything should be considerably cheaper in China.  So we then looked up what waxing translated to in Chinese and the ladies were like oh no, no, no and we came to find out that it was laser hair removal treatments that we were about to purchase.  So then we were back to square one and seeing if they just did waxing.  They claimed that they did and we made appointments the next day to come in for what was maybe a wax, but we'll never know...

After that whole ordeal we were ready for some wine!  On our way back to the hotel we finally found a random coffee shop that served wine after looking for awhile.  It was an interesting venue and I'm not sure they actually had any wine as it took over thirty minutes for the wine to finally be brought to us and the place wasn't busy by any means.  So we think they went out and got wine for us.  We ended up on the third floor of the place, no windows, smoky room, just chatting away about lord knows what and letting off steam.  Two bottles later, as I was on my way up from ordering our third bottle, I saw this huge Teddy bear on the second floor and decided he should join us at our table.  So I proceeded to lug him up to the third floor and Teddy became our third wheel for the night.  We then had fun taking photos and videos which we sent to Karri's fiancé, and I got my FB cover photo and iPhone screen photo updated by Karri.

Teddy and I deep in convo with Karri 

Teddy is so funny

"I know, right?!"

"I'll have the rest of your wine if you insist..."

"But, not before filling it up first!"

After our afternoon of wine, it was still only about eight in the evening so we headed nearby to meet the others for dinner at the place we tried to find the previous night.  We were starving by this point, so scarfed down some surprisingly good nachos and some other appetizer of which I do not remember.  By the time my burger came, I was stuffed and ready to go home.  Karri and I peaced for the evening and had an early night after our crazy day.  

No idea where the props came from, but of course, we found them!

Helen and Carl

Amazing...

...followed by this message to Huw for putting us on separate watches!! WTH!

And don't forget these two!

I think the others headed over to Bar Lennons for the night, where the prime numbers continued.  When I woke around 7 the next morning, I saw that I had gotten random texts from Tino and he had still not made it back.  So when I went out into the other room where Pony was sleeping, I asked, did Tino ever make it back?  To which he responded, I don't know, but then he looks up and starts laughing.  So I look over to where he is looking and Tino is passed out on the office chair in the room with skewers in hand...amazing!

Good night?

Saturday was our last day in Qingdao before we headed off for the next race.  That morning, I packed up my belongings, picked up everyone's glasses and my contacts from the store, then headed over to the boat to help with last minute work.  We were told the night before that we had to work on the boat again and were not able to make it to the waxing appointments, so we'll never know for sure what we were in for there.  In the afternoon, we had time for a quick bite before our crew brief, so I finally made it to Din Tai Fung for some soupy dumplings!  Then we had our standard crew brief and team briefing afterwards on the boat.  We had a night cap at the Dubliner nearby and then it was home for the night to try and rest up for the race start!

Yum, yum!

Race start days are always hectic.  We were up early to get one last breakfast in at the hotel, then checked out and got all our of millions of bags to the boat by 0800 for immigration.  After that, there were a few ceremonies and we marched back and forth to the drummers again before slipping the lines and heading off to the great Pacific!

We are def the best dressed at breakfast...

...trying to compete with Luke's look from earlier in the week...

He actually went and changed clothes after this...we so fashionable!

Parting ceremonies

New shades...sweet

Getting ready to slip

Fireworks as we depart the marina

Parade of sails

Peace out Qingdao...next stop, SEATTLE!!!

Leg 5 - Race 2: DaNang to Qingdao

After all the ceremonies DaNang put on for us, we were on the boats and slipping lines around 11 AM.  We motored out to the other side of DaNang where the beaches are located for our parade of sails and the start of the race, which began at 4 PM.  

We had a good start, staying with the boats in front.  We were predicted upwind sailing right away, but surprisingly the start wasn't so bad.  It didn't last long though and the upwind sailing has been relentless!  Since the direction we need to go is straight into the wind, we have to tack a lot to move forward.  As such, boat positions change all the time as the boats cross each other on different tacks.  So far we've managed to stay in the lead, but once we get to Taiwan, the true positions will shake out.

Passing PSP in the middle of the ocean...see tiny little boat on horizon between Amancio and Jan.

It is already day 7 on the boat and I am trying to think of anything exciting that has happened but nothing comes to mind.  There isn't much you can do during upwind sailing besides hold on and try not to hurt yourself.  Oh! That does remind me...during one of our sail changes, I went down into the sail locker to help Luke locate the yankee bag.  In the process, we attempted to move the windseeker back up on its bunk where it had fallen from, but the boat fell off a wave at the same time and I went pummeling into the head of the windseeker.  I thought I for sure either broke my nose or my eye.  But within minutes I was fine.  No blood or blurred vision to make of it, just a sore, swollen area between my eye and nose.  Then it was immediately up to the bow to unhank the yankee and as I was so keen on removing the sail in the first place, I was given the B2 position and was nice and soaked by the end of it.  B2 is the second person from the front of the bow, B1 usually does hanks and B2 helps with the sail.

One other lovely moment that comes to mind is when Steve decided to vomit all over everyone. As I've mentioned countless times, people get sick during upwind sailing as we end up bashing through the waves.  I have been fortunate so far to not really suffer too badly from seasickness, but others are not so fortunate.  Steve is one of these people who can barely go a day without being sick every minute.  So the other day while the crazy Dutch man was on the helm, we hit a big wave and Glen went flying across the deck and ended up with a bloody nose.  Steve, being the resident doctor on board, quickly went over to aid Glen and make sure he was okay.  After the incident Steve made his way over to the high side of the deck sitting on the rail.  Within seconds, he was sick and attempting to vomit over the side of the boat.  For those of you not familiar with sailing, anything you toss over upwind comes directly back over downwind.  I was so luckily positioned behind Steve during this episode and got vomit spewed all over my face and jacket.  I quickly dived to the lower part of the deck to try and avoid more vomit coming my way, screaming in the process.  Amancio happened to witness this from the companion way and thought I had seriously hurt myself as I had a look of horror on my face as I dove down.  After us all yelling at Steve, a fresh water bottle bath and baby wipe wash, it was back to sailing with the lovely scent of vomit trailing behind me.

Other than that, just a few sail changes here and there, trying not to pee on myself while being heeled over in the heads, and having lots of inappropriate boat conversations that I would never have in normal life.  Standard.

We found an elf in the galley!

....

We are still trucking along now.  We've managed to find all the wind holes as usual and are slowly losing some positions.  We just caught some wind, so hopefully this keeps until we get the northerly winds again that will help us catch back up to the rest of the fleet.

On other boat news, we've lost our generator.  Something broke and we don't have a replacement spare part, so no fix can be made.  As such, all fans go out the window and all the electronics will slowly die as we won't be able to charge anything now on the boat.  However, once we start going upwind again there won't be time for such novelties and then we will have eventually made our way to Qingdao!

...

We finally made our way past Taiwan and back into upwind sailing.  Our biggest obstacle the past few days has been dodging millions and millions of fishing vessels.  At night, we are literally surrounded in a circle of lights, with boats at every point.  The fishing boats are lit up like a disco with loads of bright lights.  As we approach, it is quite eerie as the lights are on but there is no person in sight.  So it is up to us to maneuver around them.  They are usually just drifting but some are motoring and others decide to motor back to us after we cross paths to have a look at us.  So that has been fun.

An idea of all the vessels we pass out there seen on our nav screen.  And these are just the ones that have AIS!

Another thing we get late at night is big ships shining their search lights on us.  I'm told they do this so they can confirm what type of boat you are.  So our response to this is to shine a light on our sails so they can see that we are sailing.  One of these nights after Amancio had flashed the main with his torch, I thought he was pointing his torch at me, so I came to wondering how I could identify myself.  So I created my "It's a Hobbits!" sign so I could flash my torch on my sign when I was asked to be identified! haha...silly boat humor.

There was a cold front predicted after we passed Taiwan and Huw wanted to do some work on the retrieval lines we set up for reefing.  Since I have been nagging him constantly about going up the mast, he let me do the job along with Karri!  They sent me up late in the afternoon, so didn't have much time to play before they had to bring me back down again.  My inner monkey was in full effect as I swung back and forth from one side of the mast to the other.  I just had to tell myself to not look down so I wouldn't freak myself out!  All and all was good fun and I only ended up with a few minor bruises in the end.  But that was only due to my rock hard inner thigh muscles being hard at work trying to hold on to the mast! Haha

Ready to go up the mast!

Hard at work on the lines

Then the fun kicked into high gear yesterday as the cold front hit.  Fortunately for me, I was on mother duty, so I didn't have to suffer the elements of being up on deck.  The temperature has dropped dramatically and this is probably the coldest it has been during the entire race even compared to the Southern Ocean.  We were getting gusts up to 78 true wind even though the forecast was for around 35...WTH!  I think someone else said they saw up to 100 apparent wind as well.  For those of you that are not familiar with true and apparent wind, the true wind is what it is, the wind speed if you are standing still and apparent adds in the speed of the boat.  So when you go upwind, the apparent wind speed is always more than the true because you are going against the wind and it makes the speed you feel stronger.  Add in the freezing cold temps and that wind is cold as F!

Trying to stay warm below deck with a hot drink and hot water bottle on my toes

So yesterday as I was fighting my way to stand straight in the galley and not have everything go flying, the rest of the crew were busy on deck fighting through the storm.  As we approached it, we switched from yankee 1 to yankee 3 in preparation.  Then once it actually hit, it was down to reef 2, then yankee was dropped completely, then down to reef 3, then the stay was dropped, then the full main was dropped and eventually the storm jib was hoisted to give us some steering control.  Keep in mind during all this action, huge ass waves are crashing over the deck making anything impossible to do in a timely manner and no one can feel their hands as it is so insanely cold.  The wind and rain/hail at one point was so strong that I was wearing my rain hat in the galley because it was coming through the companion way opening.  After all this, we had little control over where we could go, which made maneuvering through fishing vessels even harder.  Not to mention we ended up going southeast which is the complete opposite of where Qingdao is.  So the front basically added at least an extra day to our journey as we spent all that time doing miles in the wrong direction...

Yankee bursting out of the sail locker after it was shoved through the hatch

Me huddled on deck trying to stay warm!

On a happier note, today is my dad's birthday, so Happy Birthday to you, Pops!  So excited to see all my family in Seattle soon!

...

So that was March 9th and we arrived around March 12th, I believe, so let's see if I can recall what happened on those last few days if anything interesting did...We hit a few wind holes as standard when we are close to port, I don't recall anything else breaking, and we had to arrive to the finish line by around 1100/1200 in order to motor into Qingdao before sunset.  I do recall as we were getting closer, we still had all the fishing nets and vessels to avoid, but as we approached the finish line there were massive cargo boats anchored everywhere waiting for their turn to come into port.  It was also quite foggy, so we had to keep someone down below keeping an eye on the AIS so we would know when the next boat would appear.  So we'd spot them on AIS and then wait for them on deck to magically appear out of the fog.  Good thing they were all anchored or else it would have been a bit more interesting!

Imagine if one of these was coming for you!

The last day was tentative whether we would make the 1100 time and even then we may not be allowed into the port and have to motor around for the night before coming in the next day.  Luckily, we did make the time and were allowed to motor in so we didn't have to wait an extra day on the boat...and good thing because it was quite a night at Lennon's Bar that we would have missed out on!

Luke driving us over the finish line

Finished! Time to motor

#rockstar

Celebrating the finish with some apple juice, which is a luxury on the boat as it is real juice and not squash!

And a few random photos:

Amancio the great made us a tuna steak!

We found Karri's new favorite snack!

Nom, nom, nom :)