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!