Arrival in Puerto Sherry
1st race completed and what a race it was, but time to recharge the batteries, repair the boat and catch up with family and friends.
As we crossed the finish line into Puerto Sherry, there was a feeling of pride in the team’s achievements. We’d learnt a lot in a week, and 5th spot was a tremendous achievement. We’d dropped our sails and raised our banners, ready to enter port. As we looked over to Punta, trying to enter the marina, it soon became apparent that it was low water and our Clippers needed more water to get in. We had another two hours to hang around before we could get in. We could see the pub, smell the beer but couldn’t get near it. We decided to motor down the channel a bit to welcome Qingdao, finishing 6th a cracking effort, especially after organising a medical evacuation for one of their crew.
Eventually we had the call to enter the marina. A fair number of supporters were there to cheer our arrival and as we threw lines, the reception committee were on hand to give out stash, flowers, T-shirts, caps, but more importantly some very cold soft drinks and beer. It is surprising how much you miss being able to pull open a fridge door and pull out a cold drink! So we sat on the deck reflecting and chatting with other boat crew, especially Punta, who we had been so close to for so long. Enjoying a couple of very cold beers. After the photos had been taken, it was time to clean down the boat.
Cleaning and Repairs
Living in a plastic hulk for so long, everything gets damp, food and all sorts of things get dropped which eventually brings mould and a sick boat, so it’s very important that everything is cleaned properly, that means everything comes out, and I mean everything, bags, cloths, sleeping bags, sails, ropes and floorboards. Everything is washed down and dried, then put back. Many of the guys have organised accommodation, Airbnb, hotels etc. I’ve decided to stay on board and use the marina facilities, which are a bit of a walk, but clean and tidy. So, after most of the afternoon cleaning the boat, time for the pub.
There is a massive support team that follow the clipper around the world, containers filled with materials and equipment to repair the boats at each stop over. Each boat carries some of those spares and fleet tool boxes. The engineers are going to be very busy. Lots of breakages and running repairs required.
CV25 have a number of issues that need sorted. We’ve had a constant leak coming into the 1st mates lockers via some of the through fixings, namely the running back stay fixings, the port spinnaker block and the main traveller. CV25 has done a few milers, this will be her 5th circumnavigation, and she’s had many running repairs. So in many instances, it’s now better to strip right back and start again and just as well as we found significant wear on the pulley through bolt caused from some broken bearings, so a new block was also fitted. We have a few holes in our Spinnaker from the wrap around the inner fore stay which needs a monster effort from our sail repair team Kerry and Sarah. We snapped three of our four mainsail Batons in the 1st storm from flogging too long whilst trying to put a reef into the main. It gets a bit hairy when the wind is gusting at 55 knots! We also found that some of our 1st attempts at rope work, wasn’t up to scratch. So many of the doughnuts, basically a small circle of rope to attach shackles to, had to be replaced on many of the sails. Many of our 1st attempts at splicing were a bit amateurish, so again lots of removing and redoing. We had engine and generator servicing to do, and winches! Well we decided not to do the winches as they were fully serviced only a week before. But that nearly came back to bite us and a learning for future maintenance.
We had to top up our, stores, a process called victualling. This is a major effort from all the guys involved, and a special mention needs to go out to Lucy, who managed the process off the boat and Melinda on the boat. We left Portsmouth with the majority of our provisions in place for the 1st leg, some 40 odd days of food, all packed in day order with menus and cooking instructions supplied. You couldn’t move for food and toilet rolls when we left. Probably close to 1/2 ton. It became obvious that some of the teams only victualled for this 1st race and whilst it’s made them a lot lighter and helped them in race 1, they will need a monstrous effort to find enough of the right food for race 2. We fortunately only needed to top up with a few fresh items and, yes, even more toilet rolls.
Duties and Downtime
Whilst in port, we have a number of duties to perform. Some of our duties are community based, we have PR duties and our boat has been chosen for press duties. We basically take out a number of press and similar type people on a trip out in the boat to raise our profile. I decided to go on a tourism trip, organised by the host port and a few others got involved in a restoration project, so I missed our press day.
As we come to the end of the week we head out as a team for a meal and to celebrate Charlie, my bunk buddy’s birthday (more of the bunk buddy later) and find out that one of our crew will unfortunately have to leave us for family reasons. It all gets emotional, but we hope he will be able to rejoin us in a later leg.
On Friday we have the awards ceremony, which we all attend in our team colours. Lots of Spanish food and drink provided with a couple of beer tokens to get you going makes for a very entertaining evening with local music and dancers and after a few beers, it’s obligatory to join in, although l, if you know me, it doesn’t take too many beers for me to get up on the dance floor and shake out a few moves. A really enjoyable evening but left the team feeling we could have been on that podium and got the energy back for race two.
I mentioned my “bunk buddy” and the sleeping arrangements on the boat are cosy, to say the least. There are 7 bunks in use on each side of the boat, giving us 14 bunks in total. The Skipper sleeps on the Starboard and the 1st mate on the Port side. This leaves 12 bunks for a crew of 18, so we need to share. I’m of the opinion that circumnavigators should be allocated a bunk for the duration of the race and share when and where required. However, Clippers way is to jumble it all up! We’ll agree to differ. So in my case, I had assumed that I would be matched up with a buddy from the other watch (I’ll explain that later) for the duration of a leg. But know, just as you get used to living condition, Gavin, our skipper, explains that we would be changing our watch and bunks for race two, my OCD, goes into overdrive and to make matters worse, our watches and bunk allocation will be confirmed on Saturday afternoon, the day before we race, I can’t really fathom out the reasons for such late notice, but it is what it is! As it turned out, I’ve been allocated a “coffin” bunk allocation to my self which whilst being very restrictive both in space and comfort, means, for this race at least, I won’t be sharing which is a positive.
The watch system, is a tried and tested method for sailing boats, basically the team is split in two called port watch and starboard watch, with normally a watch leader and a support watch leader. There are many watch systems but on our boat, Gavin, has chosen, 6 hours on starting at 6am and 6 hours off, 4 hours on, 4 hours off, 4 hours on, 4 hours off and repeat. On many occasions the cross-over gets eaten into as more complicated sail changes require more hands on deck or a spinnaker will require “woolying”
We head off to our team brief on Saturday morning, its part of the process to explain to all crews, the full details of the next race, the scoring gates, expected weather conditions and what to expect and finally the start times for slipping lines and the expectations for Sunday’s departure for race 2.
Race 2, Underway
As per the start of race 1, all very choreographed, with team photos on board the boat again and slipping lines with military precision. We head out to the bay, raise our mainsail and banners and come back towards to port in a parade of sail. Lots of the locals had come out to watch, getting in the way, giving race start officials a few headaches. Having the local sailing club out for Sunday racing, didn’t really help much either, with a load of young sailors trying their luck ducking in and out between 40 tonne sailing boats is not for the faint of heart, but you have got to love the ambition. So, with the committee boat finally chasing off the hoards of dinghies, the parade of sail commences.
As per Clippers SOP’s, we must complete Man Over Board (MOB) at the beginning of every race so we dropped our banners, raised our sails and got on with the MOB drills, which became more interesting ducking in and out of the local dinghy sailing clubs races.
We get ready for the start at 15:00 local time, the gun goes, and we are off for race 2.
Many thanks to Puerto Sherry for the hospitality, you’ve been great.