Bouncy, bouncy

As we work our way through the last 200 miles of this race to Qingdao trying to chase down GREAT Britain and Derry~Londonderry~Doire, the sea state has changed, from the very rough conditions of the notorious Taiwan Straight to a flat calm, the wind has come round and dropped in strength making progress slow. We hope to get into Qingdao on Monday, this will make a change for us, being able to greet the majority of the fleet in and not be as rushed, as we are usually towards the rear of arrivals.

I was well prepared mentally for this race; very rough, bouncy, cold, wet and hard work. However it has been a very rewarding leg, with the conditions we had I have learnt so much off Matt and the new crew members, lots of little tips on how to make Mission Performance go that little bit faster, from being able to sail her even closer to the wind towards a waypoint, to recording our figures and averages and evaluating them as to where we can improve still further. We all feel we have raced the boat well over the past week pushing ourselves to the limit and with a crew of only 12! This is a lot less than the two boats ahead of us! 

Can you guess who it is yet ?

Helming has been difficult, not just because of the sea state, but also having to avoid the many cargo ships and whole villages of fishing vessels, we have a constant watch out for potential collisions and are convinced the fishermen talk to each other over the radio on how to push us off course and out of their path, on one occasion a fishing boat looked as though it was going to pass behind us before altering course to come straight at us, so we had to 'heave to' (a way of breaking hard) to avoid a collision and go round them.

One race I am winning is how much of your wardrobe can you put on with the temperature dropping so much and I'm in the lead with 10 layers. This makes the hard task of moving round the boat even harder, on one occasion while climbing out onto the deck I got caught up in some of the ropes and became stuck on the floor, much to the amusement of the rest of the crew! 

Of course this all helps to prepare us for the big, big challenge of The Pacific...coming soon, to a boat near you!