Race 7 - Day 3
Skipper Report
26 February

Hello,

We’ve had our first casualty to seasickness here on Visit Sanya, China. Last night, at approximately 1400UTC, Richard Clements spewed all over the low side of the deck after a heroic effort holding it in during the first sail change of the race. I’m sure more will succumb soon.

As that obituary may suggest, we are now heading up wind. Just after sunset, we approached Virtual Mark Massey and started to change head sails in preparation for rounding the mark. In the end we actually went round the mark with no head sail and a double reefed main, which seemed to work well in the 30 knots of breeze that we had.

The on deck team did a great job of getting the Yankee 1 down and packed away in time to round the mark without over shooting it. They finished the evening’s activities with a couple of reefs and up into the Luzon Straits we go.

As I’m sure anyone who has been upwind on a Clipper 70 will attest, it is definitely not a comfortable ride, even more so when you have a strong northeast monsoon blowing over the start of the Kuroshio current which is running in the opposite direction. But this did not deter the team when we got the Yankee 3 on deck in the dead of night and sent them to the bow as we smashed into and fell off the back of these short and sharp waves.

Now the sea state has abated we are cruising along nicely up towards the south coast of Taiwan. Shortly, I’m sure we will begin to see the fishing boats that fish in these bountiful waters and that cause us so much anxiety with their huge nets and lines.

Until tomorrow,

Seumas