Still trying to catch up with myself.  Glad there is a Starbucks right by the boat though I wish they did not close at 8pm.

Trip to London with the boats was much fun.

It started with a practice on how we will be doing the parade out of St. Katherine’s Docks in London on the 30th.  Incidentally there maybe coverage on early morning NBC show this coming Sunday of the beginning of the race start. Continue reading →

Here’s the target start and arrival times for each leg, including the London-Rio leg starting August 30 (download the PDF version.).

Five days until start! Here are three ways that friends and fans can our team (ClipperTelemed+) during the Clipper Race.

Track the race live

You can access the most up to date information on the boats’ positions via the Race Viewer, which is updated every three hours  and will be active as soon as the race starts on 31 August.  During the 2013-14 race, the Race Viewer received more than a million page views.

Get daily updates

The Skipper’s blog and crew blog with photos will be posted on the website daily on our ClipperTelemed+ team page. Every day each skipper and team will post their experiences,  photos and videos while racing the world’s oceans.

Create your own virtual race

In addition to tracking the fleet as they sail around the world, you create “sail” alongside the teams and test your skills in the Virtual Clipper Race Game. More than 60,000 people played the Virtual Clipper Race during the previous edition of the game, with one player making the transition from virtual sailor to real sailor and will sail the Leg 6 of the Clipper 2015-16 Race. The game will launch on August 31 –  click here to get started.

 

Here are a few more Gosport pictures!

OK, I am off to class!

My camera, computer and me are having a contest to see who can confuse the other the most.  I am gaining in this competition and have some more to share with you before I have to go to a class from 8:30 to 5 today.  What is with that??

It rained most of yesterday and I got soaked on adventure with Nick to get our Vietnamese visas.  But it was great fun as we then just rode the bus around to see the city.

Back to Prep week…..

Keel is behind the lift.  will try for a better picture of this.

Off for now, more later!

Well this was a definite amazing adventure of WORK, WORK, and WORK.  So I will put in some pictures and explanations as there are no words to describe.

You tie line to stable bar on dock and then tie something to the line to squeeze it and pull it hard down the dock.  The intention is stretch the outer layer of line over the inner core to eliminate stretch (I think).  Anyway, we would pull those lines til we had some excess of outer over an empty core area.  Then we would put a needle in the last of core area and then do a bit of whipping on the end of core area.  We did 16+ of those and guess what.  They are not short lines.  I believe that if I had my fitbit on I would have done more than 15,000 steps each day.  I became known as the “How many lines are you going to have to milk person”. Continue reading →

Last remaining adventures on Level 4 were some games when anchored between boats.

One was thinking up questions and asking over the VHS.  Nik really got into it and asked lots all with the same answer.  Actually I think he just liked to say over and do the call from the boat.  Questions like: What is the total amount of these currencies in US? One bill with George Washington, one Abe Lincoln and one with Andrew Jackson?  And the answer is….$26.  Actually every question that Nik  came up with had the answer of 26.  It had to be because our boat was CV26.  Now, how many questions can you come up with that has the answer of 26??? Continue reading →

With many other things to learn, we then got alongside Mission Performance and practiced throwing line over to tow a boat and then throwing line to transfer either supplies or person between boats.

And of course a bit of recreation!

After my day with the Green Monster and our boat sailing towards the rest of the fleet so that we could race back with them from France, we discovered that the race had been abandoned due to lack of wind near French mark.  Once all had gotten back together we did a LeMans start and off to the next race, again to the same French mark.  all went well and as we sailed we did a bit of work on the boat.

Wonder why i am so cold and Mark is in shorts?  Hope this is not a sign of issues with cold to come.

Sea behind me is looking a little like wind is dying.  Matter of fact it did die and after a night of sailing with no wind this race too was abandoned.  (We were in 3rd at the time).