We have been at sea for just over a week on this leg. The new crew members have settled in very well; Ben Pate has joined us for the rest of the race and Alysoun Sturt-Scobie, Ross Ham, Keith Evans and Patrick Hays are on board for this leg to make up minimum numbers on the boat. All of them are experienced sailors, bringing lots of good ideas and tips on how to make Mission Performance go faster. With expectations high for a good race up to Qingdao we were ready to show everyone what we could do!!! Then a call came through from the race office to say that for safety reasons this part of the race was to be stopped as three of the other boats had had rigging problems and the bottlescrew had broken on the outer forestay, which under tension helps keep the mast fixed in the upright position. Here I have a picture of it in Singapore to show where the problem is. (I must have known, haha!)
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| Outer forestay |
So for the last three days we have been motor sailing with the rest of the fleet towards Hong Kong to make a quick stop there in a couple of days and have the offending part replaced. Then restart the race up to Qingdao, which will now be run as an elapsed time race, with each boat resuming as soon as they are ready to do so.
With the pressure of racing off at the moment we have had some fun today as it is Alysouns Birthday, we had a pub quiz, at which point I got hit in the face by a flying fish; everyone thought that was hilarious, except me!
Finally all on Mission Performance send there best wishes to Laura Frudd who is a Sea Cadet from Yorkshire and should have been joining the team in Qingdao, unfortunately glandular fever has put a stop to this. Laura we are thinking of you!
Thanks, I’ve been trying to work out who the new crew are and had only identified Ben and Alysoun.
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