The last day of a long break in Singapore was spent partially in
Dutch surroundings. A big thank you to Onno and Esther for letting me
use their washing machine, feeding me Dutch bread and for a really nice
evening chatting and dining at their house. I felt recharged in every
aspect and ready to race again: Qindao, here I come!
Wrong!!! I really have to learn to manage my expectations! The start
was not bad and we managed to get across the line fairly OK but to then
drop in dirty wind because nobody had bothered to pull the traveller
(controls the mainsail position) up so we could not make the right
angle. It just disappoints me so much these small set backs and I know
it means nothing on a 2000 mile race but still: aargh! Maybe next time I
should go cruising on a big cruising catamaran instead of racing on a
carbon fibre racing machine.
Anyway we are now 125 miles East of Vietnam after a week of matchracing
against about 6-16 knots of wind. I like upwind sailing and tweaking the
boat is a good pasttime. The obsession everybody has with the other boat
is quite amusing: "we sail higher and faster that they are". So why are
we still behind them then??? It keeps us all on our toes and it is still
nice to know where the competition is and what they are doing. The fleet
was roughly split in three with us being the furthest West for several
days but now the boats are joining up again. Still many miles to go and
with the current wind direction progress towards the scoring gate is
slow.
We are still in the tropics. Despite the fact that everybody is talking
about the gale force winds that we expect East of Taiwan and the
subzero temperatures we are getting North of Taiwan it is still very
hot! The tropical moisture and temperatures lead to a smelly boat,
itchy scull, sweat sores, funny looking blisters on knees and bum and
small infections to tiny wounds. All very uncomfortable, so bring on the
cold. The great thing about our route is that is is set in very busy
shipping routes so there is plenty to look at. Lots of floating debris
of which the high light so far was a television monitor (tube type).
Most interesting animal out of the four types we have seen so far was a
sea snake. Yellow with brown stripes and a flattened tail. It swam with
its head above water and looked really quirky. Other animals are flying
fish, dolphins and just one bird. I guess the rest of the animal kingdom
think it is too hot too. One big advantage of sailing in the tropics is
sailing at night. When the temperature drops to cool and the stars light
up the sky there is really is no better place to be.
