I had arrived in Portsmouth the previous day and after an early breakfast I took the ferry to Gosport where I was able to meet Diego, a really nice chap from Colombia.
When we arrived into the office we were given four pieces of our gear for the race: the HPX smock, the HPX salopettes, the long sleeve t-shirt and the shorts. I was really happy to get them, another step in making this race real! We were then directed to our boat where the bunks had already been allocated, I would be in the middle lower bunk on the port side, not bad.
Once we were all on board, we listened to an introduction from Ineke and Nano. I learned that this week we would be sharing the yacht with team Ineke, there were not enough people from either team for a full boat, so it had been arranged to share one, with half the crew being team Ineke and the other half team Nano. I have to say that I was not very happy with this as it meant that we would not be able to do everything in full following Nano's ways. Also this was actually Ineke's boat, so many things were not laid out or prepared the way that Nano would have liked it.
We also learned that Angus had been diagnosed with an ulcer, which meant that he would not be able to accompany us during this week. He had come to say goodbye and wish us luck and he soon departed to get some rest. This meant that we would have Ineke and Nano as skippers and Josh as AQP.
We split in two teams and Ineke's group went down below for a security brief while we did the same on deck. Nano gave us a brilliant talk, not one of these repetitive talks where you listen to the same things that you have heard many times before, rather a great introduction to the boat with lots of little tips, tricks and advice. And then we switched with team Ineke and did the same down below. A wonderful introduction, I loved it.
We then had lunch and spent some time waiting for the time to leave the dock. It was really hot and I started wondering if I would be able to test my new foulies during this week. I used this time to chat with several people from the crew and to start knowing us each other.
Finally around 2:00pm we departed, all seven clipper yachts one after the other. Once in clear waters we hoisted the main sail, this task was done by team Nano and I think we did a good job. Then our team moved to the back of the boat while team Ineke practiced a lot of tacks. You could tell that we were on level 4, everyone was quite proficient and it was also quite nice to be able to watch while they were doing these evolutions as a kind of refresher. I got to spend 5 minutes helming which was nice but too short.
We then practiced some downwind sailing and some foreguys handling, both teams working at the same time. It was a bit claustrophobic with so many people on deck at the same time, all bumping into each other while we tried to do our tasks. At one point I felt a bit overwhelmed and had to move to the back of the boat for some respite.
It was then the turn of team Nano to do a lot of tacking practice and I think it went really well, I felt really confident in all the jobs that we all got to do as we rotated. At the end of this we did a man over board drill that went really well, again you could really tell that this was level 4 and we all had a lot of practice.
The sun was going down and we set course for the bay where we were going to anchor near the Isle of Wight. We lowered the main and spent a bit of time motoring over there, which was a bit boring. I felt a bit tired and spent this time mostly resting and reflecting on the day.
Once anchored we had dinner and then I spent some time on deck relaxing and enjoying the sunset, it was a peaceful and satisfying time. I had been assigned anchor watch from 2am to 3am, not great, so I soon went down to get some sleep. Since we were not working in watches we could not be doing hot bunking so everyone had to try to find some place to sleep. I moved to the lower coffin bunk in front of my allocated bunk, a nice little spot, and went to sleep.
