Sailing news

We at Bogun Towers have always adopted a suspicious approach toward guest contributors and have only allowed the same in exceptional circumstances (like for example when he nearly died, passim). We are however nothing if not lazy (shurely flexible? -ed) and we are delighted to bring you the following missive from one of his colleagues currently sailing across the Pacific with the Clipper round the world race:-

Asked what was the best bit of the trip so far, I would say China. It is difficult to convey the curious mix of sensations that Qingdao offered. A seaside town, with a big industrial base, as populous as London but with none of the traffic.

Everything is in Chinese. Not surprising, of course, but you get used to English being the lingua franca. I get used to being able to decipher what most words mean in most European languages. But Chinese uses characters. It's not just an antique script - ordinary working people actually read an write in it. There is a way of writing it in Roman script called Pinyin, but it is not in common use. So you have no idea what a building houses, whether it's a laundry or a hotel, for example, because it's all in Chinese.

So it's fun. And did I mention the traffic? Such as there is has a flexible view of roadsigns. They do usually stop at red lights, but pedestrian crossings are just places where they accept an obligation to try to avoid hitting you.

Crossing the road is an adventure, for there are no traffic islands. You go halfway across the street, and stand in the middle, with two or three lanes of traffic passing either side of you. Wait for a gap, and complete the crossing.

Living in the language school I was living with the Chinese, and eating their food. Different from what you get in a restaurant. Breakfast was usually man tou (steamed bread) spicy soup and a couple of tiny dishes of something spicy with ginger. As an honoured guest, I got an orange! All washed down with green tea.

And was it cold! I lay in bed, under the duvet, inside my sleeping bag. The poor buggers on the Clipper boats, sailing North from Singapore, were, I now know, suffering badly on their unheated, leaky boats.

The Clipper boats arrived, and there were very elaborate harbour-side welcoming ceremonies for each boat. This was a little odd, as they had motored up together, and were waiting outside the harbour. So one ceremony followed another at half hour intervals.

The Chinese make a huge fuss of Clipper. There was a formal welcoming banquet, with a profusion of excellent performers, lots of speeches, and a huge dinner. It was televised, and the girls in the office at the school watched it, wondering if I was there (I was, of course).

A discovery made in Qingdao was Chinese foot massage. Terrific,. I recommend it.

The race from Qingdao to Hawaii started on 24 Feb. It was cold and windless.After a while we anchored, to avoid drifting backwards. In the morning it had snowed, and I built a snowman on deck. The skipper had let out too much anchor cable, and it wrapped itself around the keel. So we took ages to get going. This was the first in a series of misjudgements which meant that we were 200 miles behind the leaders when we left the Yellow Sea and rounded the south of Japan.

We also split one of our spinnakers (not in itself unusual) and failed to get it down. This meant we sailed for a day with rags of sailcloth preventing us from hoisting other sails, and we fell further behind as a result.

The sail across (5,000 miles) was mostly uneventful. The wind was behind us, and these boats sail well downwind. We were keeping watches of 4 hours on and 4 hours off. This means you never get more than 3 hours' sleep, and this can be difficult, especially if we need to change sails or undertake other work which cuts into off watch time.

But the boats do not sail well upwind. They are shaped like surfboards. Imagine a 30 ton surfboard sailing into waves. They fall off one wave and into the next with a loud bang as the water hits the hull. Down below this is like living in a drum. My bunk is well forward, so it;'s great downwind - dry, and away from the noise of the generator. Upwind you feel the boat judder and twist alarmingly with each bang. You get thrown in the air too. It's hard to sleep in that environment.

And then there is the water. I have never known a boat with so much water inside the hull. The bilge pumps do not work well, and we were reliant on a portable bilge pump cobbled together by the crew (an electric pump and bits of pipe all held together with sticky tape) and a vacuum cleaner bought by the crew. At one point so much water was sloshing around inside that it got into some of the lead acid batteries (stupidly located low down in the hull, in an unsealed compartment). The resulting chlorine gas meant we had to heave to (stop) and let the wind blow the gas out. We had to pump the boat out, disconnect the damaged batteries, and then sail on. Very nasty. And we lost more time.

It says as much as need to be said about our skipper that he was unconcerned about the water in the boat until that occurred. There is a reason our boat is nearly always last, and the reason is him. We hardly ever see him on deck - he stays in his bunk or is glued to the computer screen in the navigation station. He doesn't want to win - he wants to get round safely and in (his) comfort.

To his credit, however, is the huge amount of time he has spent (along with Roger and Chris, two technically able crew members) tyring to fix the watermaker and generator. These are necessary, the watermaker because we do not carry enough fresh water for more than a week at sea; the generator because the watermaker (amongst other things) requires electricity. Neither functioned properly, and I took the view that Clipper had sent us to sea in an unseaworthy boat. The time and energy devoted to fixing crap equipment is another reason we have done badly.

There have been some serious discussions here about the next leg.

Life on board is tiring, and stressful as much as because we cannot wash as anything else. Water is at a premium, so we wash with wetwipes. We are not as smelly as you might suppose under this regime, but I should have liked a shower. Were the watermaker more reliable the skipper might allow it, but I guess it is prudent not to.

So ultimately into Hawaii, last, save for Western Australia, which was dismasted and went to Midway Island. She has not yet arrived here.

Hawaii is unlike anywhere else in the US I have been to. It's warm (although midwinter) and we are all in shorts. There is a Pacific feel to it. It feels safe, and there is a holiday atmosphere. It's a bit like New Zealand, without the culture. The history is of fairly ugly imperialist acquisition by the US, and there is little left of Hawaiian native people or artifacts. Nothing like the presence of the Maori in NZ. Not much agriculture either - just shopping malls and hotels in Waikiki.

Pammie arrives tomorrow, and we shall see a bit more of this island (Ohau). Whether we see other islands is questionable. Pam may have had enough flying, and there are no ferries.