My third week has seen increasing wind strength while sailing in the Northern Pacific Ocean causing the very warm water to splash over deck soaking our t-shirts and shorts!! On Wednesday we had a delayed visit of King Neptune while still coping with the leakage of diesel fuel and on Friday we wrapped the big spinnaker around the forestay and we could not get it down while the wind strength kept increasing.
This has been my first week racing onboard Clipper UNICEF which started with some very unexpected events even before we set-off on our journey to Da Nang. The Friday before the start the team said goodbye to the skipper of leg 4 and we had a team meeting with the original skipper now returned from his medical procedure in the UK. We agreed objectives for the next leg and how we would work together as a team, prepared the boat for the Monday departure at 12:00.
At 10:30 on Monday we were told that our returning skipper had decided not to continue and we were to get a new skipper and another race assistant to complete leg 5 of the race to Da Nang and onto Qingdao where the leg 4 replacement skipper would return to complete the rest of the race on Unicef.
Confused? Well you are not alone.
This week has been a nail biting week for the crews and me for different reasons. The last race from Sydney to Airlie Beach was short and therefore the finish into Airlie Beach was very close with the winner LMAX Exchange and second placed yacht Great Britain 49 seconds apart.
Earlier in the week Mission Performance reported a massive sustained gust of 70 knots pinning the yacht at a steep angle and moving it sideward at 17 knots of speed. It shows how in these warmer climates the weather can change in an instant.
