It’s good to be back racing!

First day of race 8 has passed nicely on board Visit Finland. We’re settling into watch system again and troubleshooting boat gear.

Visit Finland is back in the sea racing towards Qingdao, China. The send off from Singapore Keppel Bay Marina was lovely with drummers and dancers on stage, while boats left the pontoon one after another. Crews cheered to each other across boats, wishing everybody safe journey and good racing.

Start

We motored to Nongsa Point (apologies for poor spelling) where the start line was set between two committee boats. Visit Finland got a good start, we were third or fourth over line as far as I could observe, as there were some rather exciting sights ahead such as Welcome to Yorkshire almost being rammed by some other boat in the usual start line kerfuffle. Gold Coast had to take an extra turn around a committee boat and start line, apparently they had sneaked over the line early.

Once we were well underway, it was quite difficult to stay awake during the first night watch. The worst moments were around 4 am when I was trying to focus on watching mainsail trim, and the next moment I woke up because of having nodded off and about to fall sideways in the cockpit. We had such close encounter with New York that Ruth’s voice could be heard across water shouting something. Oli had to radio them and remind that we’re on starboard tack (and therefore have right of way), and eventually New York altered their course to let us pass in front.

Team dynamics in motion

We have sadly lost three crew members since the last race. Commodore and Mandy have left for personal reasons, and Mark was transferred to New York as they were lacking a qualified yachtmaster from the team thanks to an injury onboard. In exchange Della has joined us as media crew, she will be filming us during the race to Qingdao for the documentary. Less crew means that everyone gets a “good” bunk, nobody has to sleep on hospital bunks. Less crew also means more work for everyone else, which can be also a great thing for learning as people learn sailing primarily by doing.

Fail!

We have had some hiccups with the boat already. The wind instruments disappeared completely for the majority of the day. We had no idea about wind strength and the direction was also questionable, therefore it was best to utilise good old wind instruments also known as ears. (Rotate your head until you feel the wind evenly passing both ears – you’re facing the direction from where the wind is blowing.) It turns out that our wind instruments at the mast end do not like rain! They malfunction when it gets wet, which is slightly inconvenient as we’re surrounded by water after all.

Raymarine radar is not functioning at the moment, and so we are unable to see any approaching squalls, traffic or more worryingly use MOB button in case someone went overboard. Everyone is strictly forbidden from going overboard now. There’s absolutely mind boggling amount of traffic in this area, therefore radar is really essential piece of kit. At the moment we cannot see any details about the surrounding traffic, such as calculations for closest point of approach, estimated time of passing, type of vessel etc. that give us an idea whether a ship is going to be a problem to us or not. Good old hand bearing compass and binoculars are in good use now.

The good news is that the skippers emergency goodie bag that I prepared in Gold Coast has been successfully utilised in combat against frustration. Fudge went down well with a good cup of coffee, keeping the moral high in times of trouble!

Passing a cruiser called Double Fantasy in Malaysia, 2 33′.582N 106 47′.810E