Race 7 - Day 1
Crew Diary - Race 7 Day 1
24 February

Hello Qingdao supporters

We have begun Race 7 from Subic Bay to Subic Bay. The stop over in Subic Bay was a great and much needed with nearly a month at sea. We completed most of the repairs to the boat as well as the general maintenance in the Subic Bay Yacht Club Marina. Our Code 3 is repaired, again, and it seems there is more repair than there is sail at this point. It definitely has its own distinct character and personality. It’s become a bit of a source of pride for our beaten up but not broken culture of Qingdao. We hope to get the sail back home and turn it into duffle bags for the crew as a proper reminder of the racing, fun, and scars of our round the world race for all the team members. We were unable to get our generator fully repaired this stopover, but no worries as we have our main engine alternators to keep our batteries charged until our return. The Clipper maintenance crew, who perform an outstanding job for our boat, expect to have all the parts needed when we return to Subic Bay at the end of Race 7.

We all continue to keep interest in the spread and containment of the Coronavirus. Of high importance to us is that the Philippines remain a safe return destination, as we would very much like to have a port to return to. From what we saw, the Philippines Border Protection did a great job of maintaining security and were though in their evaluation of the Clipper boats as we arrived.

We have started Race 7 from Subic Bay back to Subic Bay. We are a little short handed of our normal crew as two of our round the worlders, Phil and Kevin, took the opportunity to visit family and friends after six months on the boat. They will return to the boat for the next race.

We had another great start and by the first mark we led the race as shown with all of our competitors clearly visible off our stern.

This was a short lived victory as within an hour we sailed into a windhole. All our competitors continued to charge along at 7 knots right up to the point where they caught us and then abruptly stopped with a sudden collapse of their Spinnaker as we sent greetings welcoming them to our wind hole.

Its a nice picture of the fleets all neatly lined up, spinnakers barely filling, and going nowhere fast.

As the race continued into the night, we continued to trade places as each boat independently found pocks of wind to push them into the lead only to find a wind hole and watch their sister boats pass them by.

On the water with us were thousands of fishermen in their three to five meter open boats with bright lights shining into the water looking for their catch of squid. It was a fascinating sight with the white fishing lights covering the ocean surface, the 11 clipper boats with red or green tri-colors 100 meters in the air and bioluminescence ghosting our wakes, as we weaved our way through the fishing fleet, all completed by the galaxy of stars overhead with the occasional shooting star dashing across the sky. It was definitely a “that’s why I’m here” moment.