Annelise around the world

Who knew that the Yellow Sea actually looked yellow?! I certainly didn;t and was really surprised to see it this morning! Amazing! Anyhow, since I last wrote, quite a lot has happened. Those of you reading all the Clipper race news will know but others may not so I’ll write a little here:

We were sailing up along the East coast of Taiwan; we had originally planned on sailing alittle bit further east to avoid the large predicted waves that were closer to the coast but then later data showed that there wasn’t really much difference so we hugged the coast intead. We were making really good speeds and were playing a really interesting cat and mouse game with DLL – some times they were in front, other times we were. It all depended who was on what tack and where the next wind shift was. Very close racing. We did all notice the change in the sea state though: despite the water being a balmy 37 degrees, the swell and the waves (and the spray) was reminiscent of the southern ocean. Except this time we were sailing INTO the waves, and not down along with them! The nights were pitch black and helming wsa really tough. Terry did a few doughnuts one night! When I was helming I was so so tense and so so focused that when I got off watch I was shattered.

One day, after watch, my watch were down below through a particularly lumpy patch of sea and the guys on deck were tacking the boat. We crashed over a huge wave and all flew a couple of feet (which is quite normal). What happened next however was not normal: Nick, one of my crew mates, lost his grip as he came down from his “airtime” and fell backwards smacking the back of his head against the internal wall of the crew accommodation area. It was a REALLY hard knock – the sound made me feel a bit sick – and it turned out that his head and actually broken a crack into the wall! :S We were naturally worried about him so “sentenced” him to bed rest and 2 hourly observations from the Debs’, our resident nurses. He seemed ok but we were watching…

The very next day, another accident befalls us. Tim, Bryan and Wayne are up on the foredeck after hanking on the Staysail. The sail is all ready and Terry and I are bringing back the sail bag when we go over another wave – just like a hundred others we’ve seen before. The wave goes over the boys at the bow and then suddenly, we hear Tim shouting and Wayne telling us all to come forward. I call for Rich and go forward with the sail bag to use as a stretcher. Tim had broken his leg as the wave pushed him against the inner forestay but we couldn’t tell how badly yet. He said that his leg “looked like it had a whole new kneecap in the wrong place”. With Wayne trying to hold Tim’s leg still, Tim using his good leg, and Sean helping to push him along, Tim makes it back to the mid bow where we put him on the sail bag. The next 20 minutes were spent making a splint out of sailties, a batten cut to size and tea towels. Deb Grant gave Tim morphine through his foulies into his left thigh and I stayed at Tim’s head talking to him. We got the hospital bunk stretcher, and just like we had practised in training, got Tim safely down below. I must admit I was actually very impressed with how we all dealt with the situation. Quickly and clearly without panic or confusion.
Once we got him down below, we cut away Tim’s clothes to assess the damage and take blood pressure. On deck, sails came down and Rich contacted the coastguards and other vessels to arrange for Tim’s evacuation. We packed Tim’s bag and then got told that the chopper was here to airlift him to hospital so we took him back up… The Taiwanese chopper tried 6 times to lower their man but their blades were too long and they aborted their attempts, saying that they would send the coastguard ship instead. I think they are used to rescuing people off flat fishing boats but our yacht’s rigging and backstays particularly presented a challenge that they were not comfortable facing. The coastguard boat came along about an hour later but they too had no safe way to get Tim from our boat to theirs so we made the decision to head into Taiwan ourselves. We went into Chi Lung where the insurance and hospital had already been organised. Nick went too to get his head scanned – just in case. It was a tough decision for Nick but I was so glad he made the right one… Better to be safe than sorry! So Nick and Tim were transferred to the coast guard boat in port but then the coast guard kept asking us to come in and moor up. We didn’t know why and wanted to carry on sailing so came close but stood off (did not hand over lines) – it then transpired that they didn’t realise we were still racing and just wanted to give us some tea/food. Once this was all understood, they gave us this amazing pot of ginger tea – yum…

Anyhow, we are now back to racing and trying to make up the ground we lost. We have had news since that Tim broke his femur in 2 laces and had to have a 14cm pin into his thigh. He’s now had a shower and is moving about in a wheelchair. Nick has the all clear and will be joining us in Qingdao for the next race. We are all so glad that they are ok and yesterday made the call that we were going to try really hard to recover a podium position – for Tim and Nick… We’d all lost our focus for a little while there with shock I guess. So here we are now, in stealth mode, working our socks off to knock off the competition. We already passed Finland and are pretty much head to head with Singapore! The gauge on the thermometer is dropping, and so are the miles left to run, but we are still as determined as ever!

Go Gold Coast!
x

32 knots of wind. Going upwind. Sail changes that take an hour. No sleep. Lips and eyes are burning from the salt and under the foulies everything is wet… I’ve got the shakes – going to bed
x

So we started the watch with very little wind. The windseeker was up and we were travelling at about 0.5 knots boat speed. But slowly slowly, as is usually the case with these things, the wind started building. Before we knew it, we had the Y1 up, then the staysail. We trim trim trimmed until our lovely Goldie was travelling at a whopping 12 knots over ground! All in about 2.5 hours! DLL got the wind slightly earlier than we did so they are still about 10 nm ahead of us but we are both really pulling away from the rest of the fleet now. As Rich said, “the rich are getting richer”! So now we’ve packed away the lightweight kite, the windseeker and all those light weight sheets. The guys were all working like clockwork getting things done and I am positively glowing. We’re past the Phillipines, into the Luzon Strait… Taiwan (and DLL), here we come!

Happy Valentine’s Day!
Gold Coast Australia crew diary 14 Feb by Annelise Nelson

Since we all started this race in July last year, we have all experienced important dates away from home. In this leg alone we have already been away for Christmas and New Year and there are of course always birthdays to be celebrated. Today is St Valentine’s Day and we decided that we would celebrate this as well. Most of the boys confessed to being typically pretty poor at remembering Valentine’s Day, but this year, I have to say, the boys on Gold Coast Australia did themselves proud.

To begin with, Wayne woke us all up with Kit Kat chocolates when he came around at 0800 this morning. Then, we discovered that Tim had made heart shaped scones for breakfast! They were JUST ready and delicious with melted butter. Yay! There was also a lot of “radio love” as Rich, our skipper, and Ben from Singapore, kept in touch every few hours. This of course is in addition to the radio conversations that Wayne has been having with his wife Heather on DLL, and that I have been having with my Nik on Geraldton (one of the advantages of all the teams being so close)! Gina received a lovely surprise Valentine’s which had all of us girls hugging and clapping and generally feeling rosy. Furthermore, Sean had even prepared a little slide show of photos taken over the last few days showcasing Rich and himself in action. This slide show was set to music… A clear declaration of love I am sure you will agree? So you see, romance has been in the air on board. It has even extended beyond the boundaries of our lovely ship; we emailed the Clipper office! We were even privileged enough to experience a beautiful Valentine pink sky for sunset. Lovely

In other news, I am loving how close all the teams are despite the fact that we have been racing for ten days now. We have all taken different routes to get here but we are now all so close! We are currently experiencing light wind conditions which are a change from the upwind beating we’d previously had. Whether or not this is a welcome change depends on how tired you are! These conditions require very high levels of concentration on the helm and on trim. We’ve also done more sail changes in the last few days that we had in the week before! Despite the fact that sleeping is easier, the level of focus required to claw forward is pretty intense and we are all still as tired as we ever where before. At the moment our closest rivals are DLL and Singapore and we are all so closely matched – it makes racing very exciting! Bring it on!

Annelise

Across the South China Sea! I can’t quite believe it but here we are again! Heading towards a wintery Qingdao as part of Race 8 of Leg 5. So what has been happening on board Gold Coast Australia? Well, for a start, one of our round the world crew mates decided to jump ship for a race to help out our fellow Aussie team. Dan Aspinall went aboard the Geraldton boat and his expert plumbing skills have already been put to use in the repair of their heads!

The race start of the northern coast of Batam was utterly nail biting. The boats were all within meters of each other. We were one of the few teams choosing the starboard side of the start line and pretty much had this corner to ourselves. With one minute to go to race start, we had the New York team come in right behind us, preventing us from tacking onto the port tack. Then, with 15 seconds to go, and about 10 metres to the line, De Lage Landen are right in front of us and forcing us to come up onto the line. DLL had no choice really; we were on starboard tack and so officially had right of way but DLL could not have tacked away without causing all the other boats behind to do the same. So we crossed the line early and immediately sailed around the end of the line to fulfil our penalty. We were in last place, but there is nothing we on Gold Coast relish more than a challenge! Concentration was intense and we were all primed to go go go!

The next few hours went by and we inched our way back to the head of the fleet. Hooray! We are tenacious if nothing else! It did help that we could see the white triangles of the other team’s sails on the horizon: a constant reminder to keep up our “A game”. Since then, we’ve been trying to maintain that same level of focus. It has been hard but we’ve been managing so far. Everyone has been helming in half hour stints, so as not to lose concentration. And the improvement in helming has been tremendous – I’ve been very very pleased with the progress my watch has been making!

As for daily life, we are slowly but surely getting back into the rhythm of our watches after the long stopover period. I still wake up some days thinking this is all a bit of a dream. In fact, the other day, Tim came to wake me up and I told him to “hold on because I’m on the phone to my Dad” to which he looked very quizzically at me Nina has made some fantastic meals and we are all SUPER excited about the new music CDs. We were all a bit tired of the music from the five CDs we’ve been listening to for the last few months! We’ve done a few little bits and pieces of maintenace in preparation for the rough weather we expect past Taiwan and have even made the most of the warm weather by bathing! Luxury! Oh, and we’ve also discovered that despite looking very similar in the low red light of the galley, powdered potato and powdered milk taste very very VERY different when added to tea!

It is now 04:45 my time and so I should really go to bed before I get up at 07:15. But I just wanted to say that this night has been glorious. A beautiful full moon and a couple of visits from dolphins. It is the stuff of dreams this is…

x

Has been eventful. So eventful in fact, we’ve broken our good spinnaker pole. Shoot.

How can things go so badly so quickly?! Four hours ago we were sailing along very happily, making good progress in fair weather. Then all of a sudden we wrap our heavy weight kite (which is bad because our medium weight is in pieces being repaired below decks), try to rehoist but wrap it agian and then notice that we somehow have developed a tear in our main sail. So now we are sailing under tri-sail, trying to repair the medium, the heavy and the main… How did this happen?!
At least it is a full moon and it is warm and dry on deck…