Race 9 - Day 27
Crew Diary - Race 9 Day 27: Qingdao to Seattle
19 April

Philippa O’Sullivan
Philippa O’Sullivan
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Here we are again, coming to the end of the famous Leg 6. The mighty Pacific leg has been a long, hard slog – I expected nothing less! It has been the leg that just keeps giving. It has thrown up so many different challenges, ones that I wasn't expecting and ones that I was. When we left Qingdao there was a lot of nerves and trepidation, to then be thrown straight into the 'great Japanese wind hole' was really tough as we wanted to just get stuck into the North Pacific. Knowing that we were bobbing around doing nothing and still had who knows what to come was hard! But as I keep remembering with sailing, there really is nothing you can do about the weather.

The conditions on this leg really haven't been consistently as bad as I was expecting. I was preparing myself for 3 weeks of constant lean, crashing around, freezing cold and soaking wet. We have had all of that, but do seem to have had a bit respite in between, so have only had those horrible conditions for a few days at a time. It has been quite consistently cold which has been unpleasant – I am looking forward to being able to feel my toes on a regular basis!

Despite what I mentally prepared myself for, I definitely wasn't prepared for a hurricane. Usually I go through these experiences on the boat and can look back and think how marvellous it was, blocking out the bad bits, but I haven't quite managed to do that yet! I feel like the only one on the boat who was, but I was very scared going through that massive storm. It brought back a lot of memories of leg 3 and losing Simon and what can go wrong on the boat. You feel incredibly alone out here in the middle of an ocean with no help anywhere near if things do go wrong. However, I think that is one of the beauties of what we are doing – we really are out here experiencing Mother Nature at her best and worst! I have never felt more like David Attenborough.

We have had some incredible champagne sailing days too – blue skies, sunshine, spinnaker up and surfing down waves. It has been amazing in that sense. We have had our whole kite armoury put to use (and 2 have decided to give it a rest until Seattle, not our finest hour), all our yankees used at some point, reefs in, reefs out, staysail up and down, storm jib up and down. It has been a pretty full on sailing leg – I think we are all physically quite tired!

It does feel like we have had it all – cold, rain, hail, snow, ice, sunshine, huge waves, glassy seas, dolphins, phosphorescence torpedo dolphins, whales, birds (poor Bernard), hurricanes, wind holes, perfect wind, fishing boats, cargo ships, fog, volcanoes, aeroplanes, space stations, stars, the moon.

As I sit here and write this, it does make me realise what an incredible experience this has been. This really has been the Clipper Race in a nutshell I think, giving us a bit of everything. As always, we have carried our GREAT spirit across the Pacific with us – everybody has pulled their weight and done their bit. With every aspect whether it's doing a sail change at night in the breaking waves or cleaning the heads at a 45 degree angle, everyone has just got on with what needs to be done. It is always hard to explain to people back home about how hard we try, despite being in 11th place – we constantly think, what could we do better, how could we push harder and we are still trying to find the answer to that. I know that when we get to Seattle I will feel like I did everything I could on this leg and I think everyone else feels the same as well.

Despite being in double first, I think I can start to feel proud that I have (nearly) crossed the North Pacific. I can tell you one thing for absolute certain, I won't be doing it again!

Toodle pip xxx