Crew Allocation Day

The second most important day in the whole process, that's how Clipper bill it. The day in which you find out who your skipper is, who your crew mates are and if you are lucky, your boat sponsor.

I could have gone down to Portsmouth Saturday morning, but that would have meant loosing an opportunity for a warm-up session on Friday! Luckily I was working from home on Friday, so I managed to sneak off a little early and catch a train. My room mate Mike, had already arrived and was enjoying the sights and having a prewarm-up  or two.

Once I got to Portsmouth it was quick check-in and off to find the red jackets. Were we the only two wearing ours? Well it appeared so, everyone else was keeping a low profile, though we did find a few more Clipperati red jackets as the evening wore on. That's not to say nobody was about though as the beers and nips flowed gently through the evening whilst catching with familiar, as well as the occasional new face.

The 5 minute walk to the Guild Hall saw a mass of red jackets. Bumped into Tim from Level 3 inside and he showed a copy of the first of his articles for the Scunthorpe Telegraph on his Clipper adventure.

The other big question waiting to be answered was, were was the race start going to be? Thankfully this was answered and it was London. What a relief - friends and family can easily attend.

Once the updates had been provided, it was finally time to meet the skippers and find out who were you going to be sailing with. Each skipper stood up and read out half their crew with the process repeated for the second half of the crew.

Mike's name was called second and as the skippers progressed, so other familiar names were called out, but not mine. The process started for a second time and the tension in my stomach became tighter. Diane Reed stood up for a second time and finally my names was called - and relax!

A branded boat as well. When the process was finished, we all went into separate rooms to start the bonding process. So Diane is Canadian, the sponsor is half-Canadian so guest what? So are half the crew. So you could say this is the Canadian boat. After spending a few hours talking about who we were, our goals and starting to get to know each other, it was time for the mass photo on the steps of the Guild Hall.

After the picture, it was then time to loosen up at the bar! The only problem was it was now 6ish on a Saturday in Portsmouth and 600+ excited red jacketed people descended in the pubs. This stage wasn't too bad as the teams were told to go to specific pubs in order to spread us out, but we were still just general public and had to fit in were we could. After a couple of beers it was then time to find somewhere to eat, but who would have room for 25 people at 7:30 on a Saturday when there was another 11 teams floating about?

Luckily Coast-To-Coast squeezed us in a space upstairs and all was well, though for some, it was bit of a shock.

Level 3 Training

And I finally get to play with a Clipper 70!

There were only seven crew on my Level 3, so why was that out of the several hundred that are going through the training, I knew all bar one of the others!

Our skipper was Matt Mitchell, skipper of Mission Performance in the previous race. It was good to hear his side of the story and for those that don't know what that is:-

Mission Performance are a business that specializes in team building and team performance enhancing. The irony is that the boat Mission Performance came last.

So why should that be? As with most things in life, this is not a simple answer as it would appear a number factors were at play here. One of the big issues though, was that were running with minimum crew on most legs. This of course puts a lot more strain on all involved.

As for the Level 3 training, it was great to finally sail a Clipper 70. Though only 2 foot longer than the previous Clippers, the design is very different, the chief one being a very wide stern with twin helm. These are down wind sailors and also design to sail at 45 degrees, which make it "fun".

The main objective of Level 3 is to learn how to handle an asymmetric spinnaker. My personal objective was to manage my seasickness. Were these objective met?

The sailing bit is easy. Well, when I say easy, I mean that is is a mechanical processes. Pull the correct ropes at the right time and things will generally be fine. Rigging a spinnaker takes a bit of thought as all the lines have to run outside and on top of everything else. We also learnt the hitchy-hitchy-twisty-twisty-hitchy-hitchy knot. A better name for this knot is defiantly required! As my leading of a kit hoist was fairly successful and I returned home with man-hands again, yes I think the first objective was achieved.

For the seasickness, on this occasion I tried the patches and on the whole, I think they worked. We didn't have that much weather during the course, but I did start to feel queasy when trying to cook dinner in a F8, so bailed out from finishing the job in order to maintain my health. So jury probably needs to be convinced on this one.

The USS Theodore Roosevelt - it is massive!