This week it has been 100 days since the coronavirus crisis started. The first patients were detected on the 31st of December, just a few hours before the new decade started. It is weird how it has only been 100 days, a little more than three months, but it feels much, much longer. I wanted to share here my thoughts about this period, specially in how it has affected the Clipper Round the World race and my participation in it.
During the first month I guess that most of us did not really learn about this virus and, if we did, it was as some news about some far away disease in China, lost in the noise of all the news that we receive everyday, with everyone concerned about other issues like Brexit. The first time when I really noticed this virus was when someone spoke about it during the meeting that we had at the Little Ship Club on the 24th of January when someone mentioned that they were worried how this would affect the race. This made me start looking at the news about this virus in more detail, wondering if it would really affect the race. But I did not even bother to mention this when I wrote a blog entry about this meeting.
Leg 5 had started on schedule from the Whitsundays on the 20th of January and I wonder if someone at Clipper was thinking about coronavirus at that point. Probably not and I don't blame them. Then on the 27th of January we got the first official statement from the Clipper Race related to the outbreak, saying that all activities at the Sanya stopover had been cancelled but the plan was still to continue to China. Then a few days later, on the 3rd of February they issued another statement to say that the next stop would be Subic Bay in the Philippines and not Sanya. But even then this was presented as a temporary measure and there were still plans to continue to China at some point. I remember that this was really the first time that this struck me as really serious, given that it had managed to alter the course of the race.
During the month or February there was much more talk everywhere about the coronavirus and I think that this is when most people really learned abut the issue. But for all of us this continued to look like a situation that was mainly a problem contained in Asia. We all remembered similar situations in the past, with the SARS and MERS viruses, where the problem had only beed really important in China and neighbouring countries, with only a handful of cases in the West.
In the meantime the Clipper Race people continued pondering what to do with the race. Once China was discarded as a stop, Korea and Japan were mentioned as possible stopping points for Leg 6. The start of Leg 6 was still maintained for the 6th of March, with Subic Bay being the starting point and an arrival into Seattle as planned. And since Leg 5 would not be able to finish in Qingdao it was decided to do a short 10 day race from Subic Bay up to the south of Japan and back.
At this point in time what mostly came to my head was what a nightmare this must have been for both the Clipper Race organisers with a logistic problem of a huge magnitude and for anyone leaving the race after Leg 5 or joining the race for Leg 6, with all travel plans changed in the last minute. And, to be honest, this race at the end of Leg 5 did not look attractive at all, in my mind going all the way to Japan just to turn around and go back looked like just a waste of time. There was a lot of uncertainty and I imagine it must have been a nightmare for anyone involved.
In the meantime, at the end of February it started to become clear that this would really turn into a global pandemic, affecting all countries, not just a handful of places in Asia. The news about Italy were specially worrying, the number of cases in northern Italy started to skyrocket and we all started to feel a bit uncomfortable about all this. But we all continued to mostly live our lives normally, going out to restaurants, pubs, cinemas, concerts, football matches and traveling, only avoiding those places where the situation seemed worse. I think this was probably the worst moment of this outbreak, when we were all still pretending that this would not really affect us seriously while the disease was spreading uncontrolled.
My Level 2 training was due to start on the 7th of March and it did not really cross my mind that I should cancel it due to the virus situation, though retrospectively I guess that would have been the wiser decision. The training was really affected by the virus with several people not being able to travel and other people deciding to postpone it. We ended up very short handed, with only four of us doing the training, resulting in us not being able to fulfil all the objectives of the course.
In the meantime, the time to start Leg 6 arrived and Clipper needed to decide what to do. Going to China, Korea or Japan was now out of the question. The arrival into the United States was up in the air. In the end they decided to do a short race from Subic Bay and back into Subic Bay. In my opinion this was a desperate measure dictated by not having any real option and I think this should have never happened. It should have been clear by then that an arrival into the United States in April was just going to be impossible and, frustrating as it would have been, it would have been better for everyone to stop the race at that point in time.
But again I can't blame Clipper for this as I think that the seriousness of the situation had not yet clicked in for most of us. When I returned from my training, the following weekend I was supposed to travel to Vienna with my wife and I was still hoping that we would be able to go. My thinking at the time was that I had the same possibilities of getting infected in the UK as in Austria and the trip was already paid, so why not go. At this time was when the government of the UK was still against any kind of lockdown and Boris Johnson was more or less advising to continue with business as usual. It was then when I read an article which was what really made everything click into place, this incredibly insightful post:
https://medium.com/@tomaspueyo/coronavirus-act-today-or-people-will-die-f4d3d9cd99ca This is when I understood that the main danger was not me catching the virus but rather me being a vector helping spread the virus around and passing it to a lot of other people and that the only real solution was social isolation.
The next day we cancelled all our planned activities for the spring and started preparing for a long stay at home. I am lucky in that, since I am a software developer, I have no problem working from home and my company was already ready for this. The situation in Spain started to look very dire and soon the government announced the lockdown. This was the point in time when everyone started to realise that social isolation was the only real way going forward and everyone started asking people to stay at home. A few days later, lockdown was also announced in the UK and I believe this was the right decision.
The race at the start of Leg 6 had come and gone, I did not really pay any attention to it as I really thought it was of no interest but when the fleet arrived back into Subic Bay they found that the government had started to impose very strict measures and now they suddenly found themselves under quarantine. This was starting to look like a real nightmare and I began remembering all these people stranded in cruise boats with no port accepting them.
Finally on the 17th of March came the decision that we had all been more or less expecting: the Clipper Race for this year was suspended until the next year. I am convinced that this was the only possible option left so I think that Clipper did the right thing here. What I had not realised until this point was that this meant that our race would also be delayed by one year. This was a big blow. One year and a half were already looking like a long wait and adding another year was a big disappointment. But I could see that there was no way to avoid this.
It was great to see that everyone that had been doing this race was able to travel back home safely but I can imagine what a big disappointment this must have been for all of them, but specially for the round-the-worlders and people starting on leg 6. For the round-the-worlders, this interruption in their plans must have been a real blow. Yes, they will be able to continue next year, but it won't be the same. And what a logistic nightmare, to have to stop your race for 10 months, doing who knows what while waiting to continue. And for people starting on leg 6, it must have been so disappointing to have to stop just as you were starting your race. I am glad not to be in one of these groups.
A couple of days later it was announced that all training had also been suspended for the time being, again the right decision to make. But I have been pondering what this means for my training. My original plan was to spread it evenly, doing Level 1 at the end of 2019, Level 2 in spring 2020, Level 3 in autumn 2020 and Level 4 in summer 2021. But this one year delay breaks havoc in this plan. If I do my Level 3 in autumn 2020 then it is going to be a year and a half before Level 4 and if I do my Level 3 some time in 2021 then it is going to be too long after Level 2... Since I had already more or less decided that I wanted to repeat Level 2 as I had not been able to reach all the goals that I should have reached in this level, my current plan is to repeat Level 2 in spring 2021, do Level 3 in autumn 2021 and Level 4 in summer 2022, this is probably the best I can do.
Before all this happened I had been very motivated with the race. I had been training, going to the gym, going out for runs, trying to lose some weight. Right now I am feeling much less motivated. The goal just seems too far away and with everything else that is going on, it is hard to keep motivated. So, no gym obviously, and my diet is gone. I still try to go out running from time to time but mainly my mind is elsewhere and I guess that it will take some months before my motivation is back. For now I am just trying to stay safe, hoping that all my friends and family stay safe and just waiting for better times.
