No plain sailing!
Hi to all of my PSP followers from the East China Sea, some 600 miles from our destination of Qingdao in China.
Incidentally, Qingdao is the place that hosted the sailing events for the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games and we understand they are planning a big arrival ceremony for us all when we arrive in about 3 days’ time.
Since my last message we’ve travelled the length of Taiwan and as expected the air and sea temperatures have tumbled significantly. In a period of about 24 hours we went from sultry hot and humid conditions to cold and damp. We’re all donning our extra thermal layers, prepared earlier in the week, and everyone’s back in their sleeping bags on their bunks. The ghetto is now dripping with condensation from the colder air and there are damp pieces of clothing draped all about the place.
For the past few days we’ve been heavily heeled over as we’ve been beating into strong northerly winds and the boat has taken a bit of a bashing as we slam into lumpy seas created by the strong wind over current conditions. Today it’s all change again…the strong northerly winds have gone and been replaced by moderate easterlies under clearish skies and on a flat sea, making perfect sailing conditions for our final stretch northwards to the finish line. The past 24 hours have seen us bobbing and weaving in and out of what would appear to be the entire Chinese fishing fleet. Quite literally there are hundreds of fishing trawlers in this small area of the East China Sea all seemingly chasing what must be ever depleting stocks of fish. All of the boats look exactly the same size and shape and our AIS (auto ID system) has been lit up with all of their signatures on the chart plotter, making any path between them all seem impossible. Thankfully, in reality it’s not that difficult and the fishermen seem prepared to alter course or slow down to let us remain on our course, some popping their heads out of their bridges to wave us on our way.
There have been a number of injuries on other boats, some requiring medevacs and stopovers in ports to drop crew off. On New York, Stefaan fell out of his top bunk the other day and was lucky to get away with light bruising. Mark our new arrival from Visit Finland, has suffered a knee injury and today Stefaan our doctor on board performed some minor surgery to relieve the swelling. Mark can’t walk properly because of it and is currently confined to his bunk to rest and recover.
We have an almost full boat at the next stopover with 19 crew overall on board, seven of which are newly joining leggers. It will be interesting to see how the group dynamics change with the new people joining. We may change our watch system to accommodate the greater numbers with a 3 watch system using an on watch, standby watch and off watch. This might make better use of people’s time on and off deck as we’re expecting long periods of sailing without many sail changes…but who knows what the weather gods have in mind for us.
I hope to get some good sailing, socialising and drinking in with Frank and his PSP crew during their time in Qingdao and to record both with some memorable pictures that can be published on the website. I’ll write again after the stopover in Qingdao and have some video footage of the heavy seas we’ve crossed in a few days that you might all find interesting. I’ve attached a photo taken during some choppy weather that gives you an idea of the conditions that we’ve encountered on this trip.
In the meantime best wishes,
Martin
