Training Level 2, Days 5 and 6

Today we managed to leave the dock quite early, it was a nice day, almost clear, with around 20 knots of wind, perfect conditions for sailing. We hoisted the main, hoisted the staysail, hoisted the yankee and we were soon sailing under full sails and doing great. It felt amazing to be part of a good team, managing the boat. We reefed the main and all went beautifully, we were all getting used to all the evolutions and it felt great.

After lunch Jim delivered a talk about sail trimming and it was probably the best talk about sail trimming that I have ever heard. Simple but to the point, very well explained, with lot of examples and drawings, I really learned a lot. We went outside and saw some examples of trimming the main, including the use of the traveller and all looked really simple, with no black magic involved. Great job, Jim!

The wind had gone up to almost 30 knots but even so we decided to shake out the reef. I led the evolution and it did not go as well as yesterday. The preparation and the actual shaking of the reef went well but during VMT (you'll learn what this is when you do your training) I moved out of the way when I shouldn't and Gavin had to take over for a short while. Always learning!

We then did a man over board exercise and it went really well. We recovered Bob in less than 13 minutes even though, being short handed, all of us had to do several tasks. I mainly managed the staysail halyard, the one that is used to lower the swimmer. Smoking the sail was fast and without any problem and the communication went very well. All in all, very happy with this.

We were nearing the end of the day and there was talk of doing some gybes while one of us was helming so when they asked if anyone wanted to helm I quickly volunteered. We started sailing downwind and the boat felt very powerful, I can only imagine what it must be driving it with the spinnaker up. We did a couple of gybes while I helmed and everything went perfectly, I was happy to have been able to drive this. This had been the best day of sailing, no doubt.

The day was almost gone and we started preparing to get into the marina, including dropping all the sails, flaking and stowing all head sails and covering the main, a lot of work to do. We finally docked and were able to take our first shower in several days and it felt amazing.  We had dinner in the pub which is close to the Clipper Race offices, a good T-bone steak makes wonders to restore your energy.

Next day we got up quite early to start the deep clean of the boat. I was afraid that being less people than the last time I did this, we would take much longer, but we were very well organised and managed to finish in record time. During this deep clean we did our individual briefings with Jim and mine went really well, he told me that they were really happy with how I had performed during the training and even mentioned that they might put up my name as a potential watch leader. I felt really proud about my achievements.

One last meal together at a nearby cafe and we shook our hands, sorry to have to say goodbye. I can say that the team was great, the skipper and the mates were great, we had a lot of fun and, even though we did not manage to achieve all the goals of this level, it was a wonderful week of training.  

Training Level 2, Day 4

After a good sleep we all felt refreshed and ready for a new day. Before we left the dock we did some practice attaching the foreguys and simulating some gybes. This was really useful as it allowed all of us to concentrate on seeing how this evolution really worked and by doing it really slowly we got to understand all the steps involved.

We left the dock and needed to hoist the main. They asked if someone wanted to volunteer to lead the evolution and I raised my hand. I decided not to look at my wet notes and see if I could lead this by myself. It went really well, I almost got it 100% right, I just forgot that we needed to wait until the helm had pointed the boat to the wind to release the pressure on the main before we could start to hoist it. I felt really proud to have been able to lead this evolution with almost no external help. Once this was done we practiced some gybes, they went really well given how short handed we are. We did not raise a head sail before performing them as we just did not have enough people to manage the main sail and the head sail at the same time.

After lunch we got ready to hoist the staysail. Again they asked for volunteers to lead the evolution but nobody volunteered. I am not sure how but I ended up leading the evolution again. This time everything went 100% perfect (hoisting the staysail is probably the easiest evolution). I was feeling really confident and felt that I had a good knowledge of the boat.

The wind had been rising, we were running under 35 knots with gusts of 40 knots, the boat was running really fast and you could see how powerful it is, even though we had very few sail up, just the main with three reefs and the staysail. We needed to do a man overboard manoeuvre but the sea was too choppy and the skipper felt it would be too risky for the swimmer to actually go in the water, so we just simulated it, without actually throwing bob overboard. We started the manoeuvre while sailing down wind so that we could see the procedure of bringing the main to the middle of the boat while dropping the foreguys and heading into the wind until we were able to heave to.

It was then my turn to take the helm. I really enjoyed helming under this difficult conditions, with a very choppy sea and lots of winds, I think I handled the boat really well. We dropped the staysail and the boat became very difficult to control, we just didn't have enough sail to keep a decent speed and it was quite difficult to steer and almost impossible to sail close hauled. While sailing in this way we decided to stow the Yankee III sail down below. The process of flaking it and stowing it in its bag was quite difficult given the amount of wind that we were seeing.

We hoisted the storm jib and the boat became much more manageable, this sail just provided enough power to get steering working fine again. While we were sailing back home we suddenly heard a big noise and Gavin announced that we had broken the storm jib. Broken the storm jib! Those things are supposed to be unbreakable! Gavin thought that it was probably just too old. Given that we had lost our steering capabilities again, we decided to start the engine and motor back home.

I was not feeling as tired as the day before but the day had been very windy and very wet so I was feeling a bit cold. I went down below for a short while until we were close to port and I came back on board to help drop the main sail. This was a bit complex because a lot of the sail had been hanging on one side after we set up reef two in the morning, so we had to flake the sail again starting from the very bottom. We docked in the same place as the day before, in the River Hamble.

This day I had been testing the dry suit that I had bought. It is a dry suit of the Ursuit brand and you wear it as a mid layer. The test was a complete success, it was really easy to get into and take off, no problems when I needed to use the toilet and it felt really comfortable. I was a bit worried about the neck which seemed a bit too tight when I had tested it at home, but wearing it during the day I did not really notice it, so a great result overall.

Training Level 2, Day 3

Once anchored and before I went to my bunk for a well deserved rest I learned that I needed to get up again at 5:00 am as we needed to do "anchor watch" to make sure that the anchor had not dragged. This involved checking some bearings every half hour and checking the anchoring line for chafe every hour. This turned out to be incredibly boring. At that time of the night my mind only thought about going back to bed and managing to stay awake to be able to do this task was just a big struggle.

Finally at 08:00 it was my turn to leave the watch but just about then I was feeling energised again. But it seems I was the only one to feel like that. Everyone else seemed to be knackered after the rough night and it was not until 09:30 that some people started appearing. I went to my bunk for some rest and a short while later I got called for a group meeting. Our skipper informed us that, given the issues that we found last night, and given that the forecast was for the wind to increase today and the following days, with even the possibility of force 8+ winds, we would drop our plans to sail continuously. Instead we would be sailing all together, with no watches, during the day and we would find a place to anchor or dock at night. I understood the reasons for this change and I think it was the right decision. But that does not mean that I liked it as it removed one of the main objectives of level 2, which is getting used to sailing continuously under a watch system.

It also meant that we went back to having to set up everything every morning before we started sailing and we needed to put everything back before we settled for the night. This detracted from our actual sailing time and it was another reason for me not liking the change. But what can you do, we were just not enough people to do anything else safely.

Pulling the anchor back into the boat was a back-breaking process, we needed the whole team pulling and even then we were all exhausted when we finished the process. And the boat was just full of mud everywhere... finally around 1pm we managed to start sailing. The wind was certainly increasing, we were sailing under 30knots. We did a "tackathon", doing many tacks in quick succession. I found that I had completely mastered this evolution, I felt really confident in all the different positions and I understood the process perfectly. We also did a couple of gybes and there I felt much less confident, with some of the steps of the process not completely clear in my head,  I was going to need more practice.

We did a tethered man over board practice and it went perfectly. It was interesting to see how badly into the water you could end if you fell on the low side of the boat, even if tethered if you were using your long line. And how different the situation was once you were on the high side of the boat. In a tethered man over board situation when going upwind it is really very important to heave to as soon as possible.

At the end of the day I felt quite exhausted, my brain was not working correctly, I clearly saw this when mooring, I found myself trying to do some stuff to help and my brain was just not responding.  We had docked in a floating pontoon in the River Hamble. This pontoon was not connected to land, so no pub! Not a problem and I was glad to turn in early, around 10.

Training Level 2, day 2

We spent most of the time today reviewing a lot of concepts from level 1: all the evolutions to hoist and drop sails, all security on deck, working with winches, man over board tethered and non-tethered, etc... All while still tied to the dock. I understand that this was needed but in the afternoon I was growing a little restless as I really wanted to go out and start sailing.

Finally, around 4 in the afternoon we filled up with fuel and sailed away with the idea of not returning back there until Wednesday evening. We had split our crew in port and starboard watches and from 8:00 pm we started running these watches. The watch system that we were using was to split the day in 7 periods, four of 3 hours during the night and 3 of 4 hours during the day. I do not really like this system as the rest periods are just too short. In a 3 hour rest period you barely have set comfortably into your bunk when you need to be raising again. And there is no really long period that really lets you rest. Anyway, the evening was beautiful, not a lot of clouds, no rain and not too much wind. We had a full moon and sailing was beautiful. I was feeling really happy. We set course South to go into the English Channel.

However, things started to go wrong soon. The sea state started to get quite choppy as soon as we left the Solent. Soon we had several members of the crew feeling seasick. One of the persons that was on mother watch was not feeling well at all so I volunteered to take his place and prepare dinner. A lot of work down below to get dinner ready with the boat jumping around in the waves. After dinner, even though I was not on watch I went out on deck as I was feeling great sailing under the moon. But it seems I was one of the few having fun as we soon started having other members of the crew feeling seasick. I went down for a short while to get some rest until was is my time to be on watch at 11:00pm. The boat was jumping around like a mad horse and it was difficult to rest.

When it was my time I went up on deck and took the helm. I was feeling really good, happy to be sailing but a lot of the people were not feeling well and we were sailing the boat very short handed, basically Gavin was having to act like Spiderman and do 4 different things whenever we needed to do a tack. Suddenly I realised that the course that they had given me to steer was North. North? That did not make any sense, when I went down below we were sailing South. I then learnt that, given that we really didn't have enough manpower to sail securely into the English Channel, it had been decided to sail back into the Solent and anchor somewhere to pass the night safely.

I understand that this was the right decision to make but I couldn't help feeling a bit frustrated that we could not continue our sailing. The problem really was that there were so few of us. If we had had a larger crew, we would have been able to continue sailing even if some people were sick. But when it is more than 50% of your crew that is sick, there is very little that you can do.

We continued sailing until we reached the place where we wanted to anchor, on the North side of the Isle of Wight. Setting the anchor was quite difficult, mainly because it weights a ton and we needed to attach it to a halyard so that we could move it around. And getting it under the pulpit so that it could be dropped was a struggle. We finally managed to be properly anchored around 2:00 am and I went down below for a deserved (but short) sleep.

Training Level 2, Day 1

Today was my first day of my second week of training and things did not get off to a good start. The train that should take me to Portsmouth was late and I also managed to somehow lose my tickets in the platform. So I ended up having to run around Gosport with my big bag on tow and I still managed to arrive 30 min late. Luckily they were also waiting for another guy and things had not started yet.

On my way to the training I learned that some people I knew were not being able to come to the training due to the coronavirus situation. Then we also learned that the other guy that we were waiting for would not finally be joining us due to an emergency situation back home. So in the end it was just 4 of us doing the training, something that would bring some consequences as you will later learn.

In this training, apart from me we had Dan, Canadian-born but living in Tampa, Nickel from Germany but living in Miami and Dumitru from Romania, living in the UK. All of them had some kind of sailing experience.

The first day of the second week is dedicated to a Sea Survival course, which is done at a school in Gosport which has a swimming pool. Our teacher was a friendly chap who specialised in this kind of courses. 

The training was quite comprehensive and quite interesting overall, it covers most of the things that you would need to be aware of in order to improve your chances of survival in an emergency situation at sea. To me the best part was that they brought a lot of kit that we could inspect (most of the things like flares or EPIRBs were dummies which could not be actually set off) and they encouraged us to play with it. Probably the worst part was that our teacher spent a long time telling us about "horror" stories of things that had gone wrong in the past at sea, which I felt did not actually add any value to the course.

They give you an official RYA Sea Survival Handbook which is quite interesting. I specially liked the pictures which are great and very informative. One of the bits of kit that we were able to try are the food rations that are enclosed in most life rafts. They are actually not too bad and quite edible. The texture is nice, they just don't taste of anything. You can see both items in the picture above

One of the pieces of kit that we got to try are the new Spinlock life jackets that we are going to use in the actual race. I liked them a lot. They are really light,  comfortable and very easy to get into, no struggle with your straps. The automatic inflation depends on a Hammar hydrostatic pressure detector which means that it is much more difficult for them to set off in wet working conditions like when working on the foredeck (this also means that they may not inflate if you don't actually submerge enough in the water, but they have a manual release with a big handle, really easy to find). I got to demonstrate how to activate one of them in front of the class and that was fun.

After lunch it was time for the practice in the swimming pool. They had asked us to bring some clothes that could get wet and I just brought a swimming suit and a T-shirt. I saw that Dumitru had brought a small wetsuit and initially I thought that was a good idea but later in the pool it was actually quite hot and I think that a wetsuit will be just a hindrance. They lent us some wet weather gear and some of the new life jackets and we started the practice.

We started by throwing the life raft into the swimming pool and seeing it inflate. It was an 8 man raft, so more than enough for us. They told us that if there are more persons they usually use two life rafts. We then practiced getting into the life raft from the border of the pool, paddling from the raft, jumping into the water and getting your life jacket to inflate, adopting the emergency posture in the water, huddling in pairs and in groups, transporting a casualty, doing the crocodile (a position to form a chain of people to swim together), getting into the raft from the water with the help of others, righting a capsized life raft and getting into a raft by yourself.

This last bit was the most difficult part of the exercise. It is not too difficult if you have other people helping you by pushing your bum of pulling from above but when you have to do it on your own it is quite challenging as the steps just do not provide any kind of adequate support and pulling yourself over the high side of a raft is quite a struggle. But we all managed to do it and I can say that all in all the practice in the swimming pool was amazing and great fun, I really enjoyed it and I think I learned a lot. I just hope I never have to practice what I learned!

We left the course at around 5 and went back to the Clipper offices where we met Jim, our skipper, and Gavin, the first mate. Jim was a bit baffled that it was only four of us. Fortunately, apart from them there were a couple of other guys joining us: Stef who was joining as second mate and Charles who was joining as apprentice. They all seemed pretty good chaps, with a sense of humour and a good attitude.

We went to the boat and chose our bunks, no problem choosing this time as there were only a handful of us. While Stef finished cooking dinner, Gavin gave us a review of all the security features down below and a review of the process to check the engine, including the famous IWOBBLEDU. A nice curry and then time to go to the pub. Everything was going quite OK and all of them seemed like great guys. It is a shame that there were no women on the ship crew, I always feel that a good gender mix makes everything run even better.