A year ago today, the final leg of the 2017-2018 Round The World Yacht Race left New York, USA for Derry-Londonderry, Northern Ireland across the North Atlantic. So, this time next year ……..

In Greek mythology, Helen of Troy, or Helen of Sparta if you prefer,  was said to have been the most beautiful women in the world. She was married to King Menelaus of Sparta but was abducted by Prince Paris of Troy after the goddess Aphrodite promised her to him in the “Judgement of Paris.” This led to a little 10 year long scrap known as the Trojan War – lots of boats, lots of fighting, a big wooden horse and it doesn’t end well for Troy. You know the story.

Her beauty inspired many artists and Christopher Marlowe’s lines from his tragedy Doctor Faustus are frequently attributed to Helen:

“Was this the face that launched a thousand ships …….”

…..or was it THIS one?????

…. Ok ……… probably NOT!!! 

but in something of a continuation of “Where’s Wally” from the previous blog, I do appear in the official video that follows, maybe even more than once, but this isn’t easy either. You’ll soon see why!!!!!

May had already seen a flurry of announcements – UNICEF, Zhuhai, Sanya and Qingdao all sponsoring boats in this edition – Zhuhai, UNICEF and Visit Sanya hulls all branded and the skipper pairing of Chris Brooks to skipper Qingdao, Seumas Kellock to skipper Visit Sanya, Nick Leggatt to skipper Zhuhai and Ian Wiggin to skipper the “Big Blue Boat” – UNICEF. The 11 AQP’s (Additional Qualified Persons) or Mate’s were selected and Cape Town, South Africa and Whitsundays, Australia confirmed as Leg 2/Leg3 and Leg4/Leg5 stopover ports. BUT, heading to Portsmouth for crew allocation we still did not know 5 of the stopover ports, where the Race would be starting/finishing in the UK, nor the dates, nor which teams we would be in and who we would be sailing with. I’ll describe the day in full in a future post but the most important bits for me ……………………….. drum roll please ………………………

The Race will start and finish at St Katherine’s Dock in London. The initial departure, as a Parade of Sail, will be on Sunday 1 September, although the Race will start properly off Southend the following morning. Similarly the Race will conclude with a Parade of Sail up the river Thames on a date to be confirmed in early August 2020.

20150830 Copyright onEdition 2015© Free for editorial use image, please credit: onEdition The Clipper 15-16 Race start in London, St Katharine’s Dock. Today the Clipper Round the World Yacht Race fleet, the world’s largest of matched ocean racing yachts will begin its 40,000-mile circumnavigation from London. The twelve 70-foot yachts paraded down the River Thames from Tower Bridge. If you require a higher resolution image or you have any other onEdition photographic enquiries, please contact onEdition on 0845 900 2 900 or email info@onEdition.com This image is copyright the onEdition 2015©. This image has been supplied by onEdition and must be credited onEdition. The author is asserting his full Moral rights in relation to the publication of this image. Rights for onward transmission of any image or file is not granted or implied. Changing or deleting Copyright information is illegal as specified in the Copyright, Design and Patents Act 1988. If you are in any way unsure of your right to publish this image please contact onEdition on 0845 900 2 900 or email info@onEdition.com

Punta del Este, Uraguay was announced as the Leg1/Leg2 stopover port, Seattle as the Leg6/Leg7 stopover port and dates were published for all Legs up to and including arrival in Panama half way through Leg 7. Importantly the Leg 8 start port – East Coast of the USA was not yet ready to be announced so I, the circumnavigators and the other Leg 8ers still await news – hopefully before the end of May.

After the initial briefings it was the turn of the skippers to “open the sealed envelopes”, “BAFTA/Oscars” style and read out the names of their crew – half a crew at a time. So it was when the 11th skipper – Ian Wiggin – read out the first half of HIS crew that my name appeared and, having already known Ian was skippering the UNICEF boat, that I first learned my boat for the 2019-2020 edition.

I wrote a little bit about Ian Wiggin in Blog 54: Clipper 2019-2020 Skippers Announced, published 26 Mar, and obviously you will hear more about him, and probably from him, over the next 15 months or so.

The complete crew totals 65 including skipper Ian and Mike Miller, 50, our AQP or Mate. Of the 63 amateur crew, 42 are men, 21 women and we represent 14 different nationalities. The youngest is 18 and the oldest is 70. 8 will circumnavigate the globe, 2 of us are completing 4 legs (not the same 4!), 4 crew will complete 3 legs (3 of them completing 1 – 3 and 1 doing 6, 7 and 8), 15 will complete 2 Legs and 34 will complete a single Leg.

My Race will start in Punta del Este, Uruguay, joining the UNICEF yacht on 18 October with Leg 2 across the South Atlantic starting on 23 October. Leg 2 will comprise a single race of 3,600 nautical miles to Cape Town, South Africa. The arrival window into Cape Town (the dates between which all the yachts are expected to arrive) will be 7 – 11 November.

Leg 3 across the Southern Ocean, will start from Cape Town on 17 November and will comprise a single race of 4,750 nautical miles to Freemantle Australia. The arrival window in Freemantle will be 9 – 14 December with crew changeover on 17 December when I will disembark.

Freemantle

I will rejoin the UNICEF yacht in the Chinese port of Zhuhai for crew changeover on 4 March 2020 prior to the start of Leg 6 up the Chinese coast and then across the Mighty North Pacific. Leg 6 will start from Zhuhai (see Blog 18: First 2019-2020 stopover announced … Zhuhai…. yes I had to look it up too, published 26 Aug 2018) on 9 March and will comprise 2 races. The first is up the Chinese coast and inside the Korean peninsula to the Chinese port of Qingdao. The arrival window into Qingdao will be 17 – 19 March and there will be no crew changeover.

The second race of Leg 6 will start from Qingdao on 26 March and will race around the southern tip of Japan and across the International Date Line and the North Pacific Ocean to Seattle, USA. The arrival window into Seattle will be 19 – 24 April. Crew changeover will be 27 April when I will disembark. The total distance for Leg 6 will be 6,950 nautical miles.

I will rejoin team UNICEF for the final leg, Leg 8, across the North Atlantic, in a port yet to be announced, on the east coast of the USA. This is likely to be in mid June 2020. The final leg will include a stopover in Northern Europe (somewhere within 800 – 1000 nautical miles from London, and then a final race to the London finish. The return Parade of Sail up the Thames to St Katherine’s Dock will be in early August 2020.

And finally, at least for the moment ………….. some help in the Where’s Wally? from the first photo:

……. to be continued …..

Pretty Much All At Sea is one year old TODAY!

That’s 60 blog posts, 37,383  words, 36 videos and 572 pictures and has now been read in 52 different countries!

it’s seen three levels of Clipper training …….

sailing onboard CV2 for levels 1 & 2 and CV 31 for level 3,

and Clipper events at The Little Ships Club in London, Lord’s Cricket Ground  and Crew Allocation at Portsmouth Guildhall.

As far as countdowns to future events are concerned it is now:

53 days to team building weekend

57 days to level 4 training

110 days to race start

158 days until I join my yacht and 163 days to  my own race start in Punta del Este, Uruguay,  for Leg 2 across the South Atlantic.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY!

I covered the introduction to Level 3 training some time ago – see Blog 57: Level THREE Training, Part 1, puiblished 9 Apr – and tomorrow I have an 0600 start to complete my sailing with Walton Hall Academy and the Cirdan Trust onboard the Queen Galadriel – see Blog 48: My Next Sailing ……. but one …… and a little something for Lord of the Rings fans!, published 20 Feb.

Today has been spent sorting out my kit, bell ringing, inspecting the bees (I’ll be taking honey in a couple of weeks) and more baking practice (with G&T accompaniment!!!).

See also Blog 20: Masterbaking……. or …….. Mother Watch Preps……or……”If I knew you were coming I’d have baked a cake”, published 4 Sep 18 – the video in that blog is worth a watch!

Level 3 was great fun, successful up to a point in that we never DID quite get to hoist the spinnaker due to the weather – too much wind thanks to Storm Gareth, great experience this time in a Clipper 70, and another good chance to try out my kit. In crawling along the deck forward of the mainmast going to the assistance of a fellow crew member in difficulty right in the bow I completed a comprehensive terst of my kit, my safety tether (we were both clipper on thankfully) and my ability to hold my breath when we were both underwater thanks to heavy seas and waves breaking over the bow. Note to self (as if I didn’t already know) …….. bow work in heavy weather is a young man’s game.

I do have more photos and more video action shots, including hoisting a rope spinnaker alongside in East Cowes (sheltering from the worst of Gareth) and a letterbox drop (basically how you drop the spinnaker) but …………….. and its a reasonable big but ………….. on the last day on safari (see Blog 59: Leg2/Leg3 Stopover recce, published 18 Apr), my mobile phone and trusty Level 3 camera, fell unnoticed from my pocket and disappeared over the back of the safari wagon while on the final game drive. I had visions of wild animals trying to work out how to hoist a spinnaker (they’d be better than us!) and various animals taking selfies and “bum” shots before the battery finally gave up the ghost …….. its not unknown!!!!

Anyway, you can imagine my surprise and delight when I received a phonecall from the game reserve in South Africa 3 days AFTER returning to the UK and a full 7 days after losing it, to be informed that they had found it and right nowe it is heading back here and will be with me, HOPEFULLY, in time for Crew Allocation Day which is now only one week away! When I get my phone back I may well post some more videos and stills but in the meantime here are a few I managed to save…….

Now this is what I call training …………….

Cape Town …..

Nxala Farm Lodge KwaZuluNatal ………

Ndaka Lodge Nambeti Game Reserve ……..

and Hartford House, in the Midlands Meander, Drakensburg-Natal ……….

MY kinda blogging ……

A few days after completing Level 3 training I was back “in the office” joining Harwich pilot Prithvi Singh in a trip out to the vicinity of the Sunk Light Vessel to Board the OOCL Indonesia, inbound for Felixstowe harbour.

Prithvi is the Deputy Harbour Master (Pilotage) at the Harwich Haven Authority and is also one of our SCS (Special Category Ships) pilots. At around 211000 gross registered tons and 399.87m long and capable of carrying over 21,000 containers, OOCL Indonesia is one of the largest container ships in the world by carrying capacity.

The OOCL Indonesia was built at the Samsung Heavy Industries shipyard on Geoje Island in South Korea and launched in 2018. She is the 6th and last of OOCL’s “G Class” 21,413 TEU containerships. TEU stands for 20ft  equivalent unit and is a somewhat inexact unit of cargo capacity used to describe the capacity of container ships and container terminals based on the volume of a 20ft (6.1m) long intermodal container with a most common height of 8ft 6 inches (2.59m). Containers do come in varying sizes and a 40ft long container would equal 2x TEUs.

Orient Overseas Container Line was originally founded in 1947 as the Orient Overseas Line and was the first Asia-based shipping line to transport containerised cargo across the Pacific. Hong Kong based, and renamed OOCL in 1969, they operate 59 ships and are a member of the Grand Alliance comprising Hapsag-Lloyd (Germany), NYK (Japan) and OOCL (Hong Kong). OOCL were recently taken over by their Chinese rival COSCO  (China Ocean Shipping Company) with a fleet of over 1000 vessels, a State registered Chinese company regarded as the 3rd largest shipping company in the world. COSCO ships call at over 1000 ports worldwide.

Appropriately for the largest container ship in the world, the OOCL Indonesia is named after the world’s largest archipelago country nation – 17,508 islands, only 6000 of which are inhabited.

Once up through the Deep Water channel and, tug assisted, around the Beach End turn and into the harbour, it was “just” a case of slowing the biggest container ship in the world to a stop, turning her with 3 tugs to port off the berth through 180 degrees in an ebb tide, and then “gently lowering” her onto the berth!

And not a winch, jammer, sail tie, running backstay or sail in sight!!

For Prithvi and the other SCS pilots at HHA, plus our launch crews and Vessel Traffic Service operators (but not quite for me) ….. just another day in the office!

I wrote about my Level 3 preps the night before it all started (see Blog 53: Clipper Level 3 looms …. in fact it’s already started, published 14 Mar), having driven down, once again, to stay with my brother just north of Portsmouth. Once again he was away. This time, early starts for those “at home” meant his wine cellar got away scott free. An early start for me meant more Clipper safety training, this time concentrating on safety aspects of a Clipper 70 yacht, and a little recap on Level 2 sea survival training (See Blog 28: Level 2 Training Part 1. Sea Survival, published 25 Oct 18) and a chance to meet my fellow Level 3 Clipperees.

Training was in the more than capable hands of Lance Shepherd, skipper of Liverpool 2018 in the previous edition of the Race.

As far as the Level 3 team were concerned let’s just say we were “small but perfectly formed”; 3 Brits, 3 Americans and a Frenchman. 6 male, 1 female, 1 circumnavigator and 6 “leggers” of varying numbers. Another “oldest” podium finish for me but this time not in the gold medal winning position. The safety training was excellent, very relevant, a good introduction to the Clipper 70s

and a timely refresher on the Level 2 stuff. At the end of our first day we moved to Clipper HQ, met our skipper for the week and moved onboard our yacht – in this case CV31, which had raced as Nasdaq in the last edition. Our skipper was Conall Morrison who had skippered Hotel Planner.com in the last edition of the Race, more than ably assisted by the South African David “Wavy” Immelman as Mate who I introduced in Blog 54: Clipper 2019-2020 Skippers Announced, published 26 Mar, and who was, at the time, awaiting the results of the Clipper skipper 2019-2020 selection.

Conall (top) and Wavy (bottom) with a rather ironic/appropriate picture of Hotel Planner.com in the middle. Appropriate in that she is approaching Wavy’s home port of Cape Town which is where I am sitting to finally get around to writing this blog, and ironic that she is flying her spinnaker given that we never got around to that on Level 3 training given Storm Gareth and it’s immediate aftermath.

……. to be continued ………..

Further to Blog 54: Clipper 2019-2020 Skippers Announced, published 26 Mar)  here is the Clipper You Tube “release” and some of the Clipper Skippers in their own words!

I will write some more about my own skipper once I am allocated to a crew at Crew Allocation on 11 May. In the meantime Clipper are telling more of the S kipper’s own personal stories at regular intervals. Check it out at http://www.clipperroundtheworld.com

A year ago today, Leg 6 of the 2017-2018 Clipper Round The World Yacht race left Qingdao, China, for Seattle, USA, to cross the mighty North Pacific. So, time for another “this time next year post although for 2020 I think I will be joining in Zhuhai and racing, fist, to Qingdao, and then across the Mighty Pacific to, at least for the moment, I know not where …….