Qingdao Stopover

What a welcome we got in Qingdao, firstly we could see Mandy and Catriona on the breakwater waving the saltire and jumping up and down, I think to keep warm more than anything, then as we entered the harbour there were fireworks just for us and we could see and hear huge numbers of drummers all wearing red on the quayside. We moored up and were paraded up off the boat one at a time and given a bunch of flowers and a small Chinese girl took our hand an led us to the stage whilst all around everyone was taking photographs. Then we stood through a few speeches and were presented with a fur hat, I'm sure you've seen the pictures and a red scarf. The skipper got a golden cloak! All very useful sailing kit! Then more drumming and we were paraded along the quayside past giant posters of ourselves all the while people with big cameras taking photographs. After that we were given food and lots of Tsingtao beer which is made in Qingdao and is China's biggest export allegedly. A wonderful welcome and so lovely to see Mandy again.

The whole boat, apart from the skipper stayed at the Intercontinental hotel which was right on the quayside of the Olympic sailing centre. There was no way in that temperature that anyone wanted to stay on the boat. The rooms were beautiful and I'm sure I've said it before but I cant tell you how good it is to have a shower and sleep in a proper, dry, and flat bed! Heaven. It was great to all be together though as we met in the top floor bar most evenings and seemed to be the only boat that did that.

Amazingly when I got there I'd had a text from nephew Jono to say he was coming to Qingdao to see me at the weekend, how brilliant was that? Apparently everyone but me knew but didn't tell me in case we were late in and I would be stressed. Anyway you'll be glad to know that in true family tradition he was put to work mending sails with us and managed some very tricky sewing of the main sail involving him laying under the sail, under a bench on the floor. If you are planning a trip to see me beware!!!!! We were given the basement of the Olympic sailing museum to do our mending which was brilliant but I don't think they had any heating down there, it was nearly as cold as outside.

Having had a bit of a strange birthday on board I said I would take the guys our for a meal on Saturday night. With the help of our boat interpreter, Vane, we found an authentic restaurant to take everyone to, it was great fun, and whilst not the best food ever it was certainly interesting. Guess who was the one who ate the chicken foot and had the chicken head in his mouth!!!! Anyway it was a great celebration, a full team turn out, and it made it finally a birthday to remember, so good to have Jono there too.

Mandy and I had a day off sail mending and were taken out by a local business man called Carson Xia, I met him at the awards evening and he was keen to show someone around Qingdao and in return be shown around the boat.  He took us for a delicious lunch of dumplings and then took us on a tour of the town, he explained all about Qingdao to us and then took us (at my request) to look around his factory.  They made induction hobs for industrial chinese kitchens, so basically huge bowl shaped induction units to put a wok in!  Some of them were a metre in diameter, it was fascinating to see and the product seemed really good, but the health and safety in the factory....................well!

Carson's Daughter Chen Chen and her Friend Chi Chi

One evening we got a taxi with Shaggy and Panda (Nick and Anne) to the night market where Shaggy and I had great fun bartering for things we really didn't need!  Anne said we were like magpies going after all the shiny things, but I'm sure you will understand that you can't have too many head torches/torches/lighters/nail clippers/headphones/leatherman multi tools......... wish my mate Pete Baldwin had been there, he would've loved it!

Photo Shoot with crabs!

The weather in Qingdao had been really quite good whilst we were there, not the polluted foggy weather you imagine, it was clear and often sunny but absolutely freezing.  Unfortunately on the day we were leaving all that changed.  I opened the curtains to see it was snowing!!  As the morning wore on that turned to rain and fog and the devoted race followers will be aware that race start was delayed because of it.  However we had a rousing send off from the drummers and cheering crowds.  Gordon got to wear his golden cloak again and we were each given a gift of Chinese sweets to take with us.  Interestingly these sweets were in large straw handbags (with a flower on) of various colours, just what we needed for a trip across the pacific!  All our team gave their bags to Mandy and Catriona so goodness knows what they've done with them.

Page 3 photo shoot!

Life at an angle

Snow on the deck

Keith with his handbag!

Me, Lesley and Hector, ready to go

Watch This Space

So we're off again, longest leg, longest time at sea, can't really say I'm looking forward to it but as Gordon says we must keep the faith.  Keep watching the race viewer, keep cheering us on and to those of you coming to San Francisco, I really can't wait to get there... but don't hold your breath.

Singapore to Qingdao.... a race!

Well after the formal complaint to clipper about the skipper, before we set sail we had crew/skipper meeting, all views were aired and all problems discussed.  Hopefully a new start.

At race start we were 3rd over the starting line, a major improvement. A change to watches due to Keith resigning as watch leader meant that everything changed on board. Rich and Baz were watch leaders and Shaggy and me assistant watch leaders ( I was asked to be watch leader but said no, I really don't want the responsibility, too much of a bus man's holiday). As a crew we rose to the challenge and worked really hard, sitting on the rail in our time off and moving the sails to the high side to have better weight distribution. All was good as we moved into 4th place. Every half hour we reviewed the sail trim and stayed with the pack. By day 9 we were still up there with the rest, down to 7th but occasionally seeing others on the horizon really spurred us on to try harder. Even at day 15 New York and Finland were either side of us, we had a real race on our hands.

Redistributing Weight to the High Side

On Valentines day the girls bunks were decorated with hearts and balloons , a card with poems in and food served with plastic hearts to decorate. Well done Baz who went to so much trouble (you didn't think it was me did you)?


In terms of wildlife ( I know you like a wildlife section in the blog) there was very little to see although there were quite a few dolphins. On pod was huge with about 150 covering a large area around us, some of them jumping clean out of the sea. There were also a few flying fish, in rough weather we find them on the decks or sometimes if you're unlucky you get smacked around the head by one as a wave washes over the boat. One day we had a flock of immature gannets flying around and trying to catch fish which were being disturbed by the boat, quite entertaining and it helped to pass a watch.

Dolphin

Fishing boats.
There were hundreds of fishing boats, you have never seen so many dots on the radar, upto 60 at a time. Many were pair trawling (two boats with a net between) but not in the same direction so would zig zag across making navigation impossible. They had different coloured flags depending on weather they were pairs or singles, it made for interesting watches and at times we got very close to some of them. They would not alter course for us at all, we heard that Gold Coast and Geraldton just set the spinnaker and went gung ho straight through the middle.....maybe why we started to loose places at that point but not sure we could've done that!

Although we were expecting this leg to be cold it seemed to take ages to get cold but it finally arrived for my birthday and oh boy did it arrive, it got colder and colder every day that week until the day we finally arrived we were dancing on the deck in full red foulies to keep warm. My birthday on board was areal wash out, we had already been sailing at 45 degrees for a while but a real storm added to the excitement and we were just crashing into the waves. We were in survival mode with the mother watch only just managing to serve food and unfortunately not baking cake as planned. Also the magnum of champagne which David Beck's wife had won in Singapore and which we planned to open didn't seem such a good idea. Just another day at sea really apart from everyone singing happy birthday to me every half hour when I was on watch ( a tradition started of course by me.....no pulling hair though, don't have enough).

Wasn't allowed to mention it really in case the Chinese authorities wouldn't let us in but from Singapore or Batan we gained a few stow always in the shape of a rat and a family of mice! They ate the food and were seen running through the galley. We were unable to catch them as we had no traps but just outside of Qingdao we found the nest and Baz picked a couple up and I bludgeoned one to death with the bilge handle whilst shouting "Die! Die!", not surprisingly it earned me the nickname of killer. The rat we eventually managed to catch in qingdao with a trap which Catriona had brought over from B&Q for us, it's amazing what the wives do for us!

So we finished 8th but finished with 3 other boats and just the same night that Mandy and Catriona had arrived which was amazing. Unfortunately because it was such and organised welcome ceremony we weren't allowed to get in at night and so bobbed around outside overnight to be welcomed in properly in the freezing cold in the morning. It was wonderful to arrive with others and a whole day before Yorkshire and two days before Qingdao although we did have a lot of sympathy for them.

Qingdao stopover blog follows shortly!

Decision Day, Saturday 14th Jan

Well there we were 350 miles behind, no wind and no chance of reaching Singapore in time let alone Batan. At 6am shift change a discussion was had between 7 of us around the wheel. Do we go North and try to keep sailing or put the engine on and motor and then face the consequences? The race had already been cut short and motoring the last stage had been sanctioned but we were 10 days away from there. I called skipper and after the customary grumpy early morning verbal blasting he calmed down enough to have a constructive discussion. As you may have read this was of course a crew decision, letting the skipper off the hook.

The scenery became more interesting after that with islands and fishing boats to see. Yorkshire and Finland were instructed to wait for us so that we could travel together over the areas where there had been instances of piracy. Eventually after 3 days motoring we met up. Considering Finland had waited 3 days and Yorkshire 2 and a bit they were surprisingly good about it. We all rafted up together, took on their spare fuel and had a party with punch and beer which miraculously appeared from somewhere. There was some jumping and diving from the spinnaker pole for entertainment before we started the long and boring "follow my leader" convoy across the sea to Batan.

Five days later and we were all nearly out of fuel so we called in at Kota Kinabalu in Malaysia to refuel. Luckily because they were waiting for a fuel delivery we were allowed ashore which none of the previous teams had been. We had beer, food and showers in the afternoon and a hearty evening meal it was great. Unfortunately the fuel delivery arrived and we set off motoring again at 7.30pm. Five more days of motoring and it was getting very tedious especially as it rained continuously until we reached Batan.
Batan was a holiday stopover to allow the the crew to let off steam before we got to the posh Keppel marina in Singapore who are important Clipper race sponsors. We duly partied hard in the bars and did as many boat jobs as we could to complete the leg. Four of us shared a villa in the grounds of the hotel and began our fattening up process whereby we seemed to consume a third of our body weight in food and drink every day to compensate for the boat food.

Saturday all the boats sailed to Singapore for the award ceremony and a weeks stopover in the city. Paul, Keith and me stayed in a 5 star hotel on Sentosa Island. Keith had his wife Mary and granddaughter Leiha over so it was lovely to spend some time with them and gave me an excuse to go to Univsal Studios theme park with Leiha. Karen Murray and I did all the sights together, including Singapore sling (s) in the Long Bar at Raffles, visiting little India, China Town plus lots of other places. Most visits involved lots of food and drink. We also went to a Burns supper in our kilts and I was lucky enough to be chosen to go to a cocktail party at the British High Commissioner's house wearing, yes you guessed it, my kilt! It's fantastic I'll never be stuck for an outfit again.
Baz's sister, who lives in Singapore, had organised for us to do dragon boat racing with the British team. After some training we challenged Gold Coast to a race and yes dear fans WE BEAT THEM!!!! By a half boat length in the closing seconds of the race. Maybe this should be the preferred mode of transport for the Edinburgh team.
In the final few days we had some discussions with Clipper and our Skipper to try and understand our poor performance in the race. Not sure what will happen now but there will be some changes to haggis and neaps watches and some role changes so watch this space and see how it goes.
Sorry for the late publishing of this blog but didn't get chance to do it before we left for China.....too much enjoying myself! Thanks for the ongoing support, more from China soon.