Race 7 - Day 22
Crew Diary - Race 7 Day 22: Whitsundays to Sanya
21 February

Hello family, friends and followers of the good ship CV29 Qingdao. It’s been a long time since I’ve contributed to the ship's crew blogs as I’ve been away. I must say thanks to the Clipper Race for their support, from my leaving of the race at the end of Leg 1 to the return for Leg 5. It feels great to be back on board. I watched the race from home – regularly posting comments on the live feeds of Facebook etc. I now have a really good idea of what it’s like to be a follower at home! The hourly check on the Race Viewer and the daily check for blogs. I would often wake up over night ‘just to check’!

You will have seen that we had been doing really quite well, maybe breaking our own record for how long we can hold first position in the race… and as a team we are working really well together. No big friction between crew members which is really nice. More recently though, you may have noticed that our progress has slowed substantially, and you guys are probably feeling the frustration as much as we are. Lack of wind is most frustrating when you are trying to sail and get to port. It looked like we were going to get in quite early; sadly, not so much now.

The lack of wind is a real test on board. Not just of how to get the boat going again… but of us. We are all here with the same objective and to have it stunted by Mother Nature is not a great feeling. All of us are having the odd quiet moment of silent reflection… “Is this what I signed up for?”, “What can I do to make this better?” etc. etc. There are many questions that we could/would ask ourselves, and I won’t bore you with them – but you get the idea. We are working incredibly hard to make every 0.1 knot count. When we worked out the averages of the wind speeds in the last 48-24 hours or so, we actually did the best we could with what we had. Even so, it is still frustrating to receive news of the other boats and how they are doing more than we are. However, we are still working on it – constantly trimming.

There are little things during a watch that make it good, regular supplies of treats (particularly from our very own Greg and Helen!), seeing birds or sea life, or beautiful sunrises. This morning, it was absolutely stunning – a deep red, that had a gradient into orange and subsequently yellow as it came up over the horizon. Just delicious. This subsequently meant it was going to get really hot pretty soon.

Last night’s 2000 watch began with a dance party on the rail! The crew were enjoying a lovely dinner that was conjured up by our Mothers and we had some music on deck to lift morale and a particular song (and for the life of me, I can’t remember the title!) by Barry White came on, and the entire crew lit up and we were boogie-ing on the rail led by our very own Kay!

In other news and agreeing with a blog from Charlotte a while ago… Tea really does make everything better. Even though I am a coffee drinker, (in fact, our entire watch love coffee) I thought I’d “mix it up” and try something new – it was nice… then disaster struck, it was thought that we had run out of tea! Crisis averted, tea bags found. Phew!

A personal note from me, hello to everyone, thanks for your e-mails, great to be in touch with you! I’m very much looking forward to catching up when we (eventually) get to Sanya!

Thanks, speak soon,

Jess