Eat, Pray, Sail: 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!

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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!

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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!

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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!