Leg 6 Race 1.. Qingdao! Qingdao! Qingdao!

13.03.2024

This is the big one for our boat chaps! We are all buzzing. After a night of little to no sleep, we returned to our dragon to saddle her up for liftoff at 8am (way too early.) and to enjoy the awesome farewell from Zhuhai. We were paraded to a stage from which we were blessed with dances from penguins, Nemos, and green weed men, accompanied, of course, by lion dancers and dragon flyers, such a cool sendoff. Once passports were returned, and we had exited China to enter China (?), we departed; motoring out under the 55km long Zhuhai to Hong Kong bridge, and four hours further which gave us the perfect opportunity to train up our new leggers for our sixth Leg and third Le Mans start.

Positions were voluntold and people were ready. Our tactics solid, and hunger sure, we lined ourselves up at our predetermined leeward position, we knew we had to work hard for this one, we would be the last boat to receive the wind, any delay off the line would result in dirty wind, from EVERYONE. We poised ourselves, 10, 4, 1, GO! Despite the boat next to us having been ahead of us before the start, we managed to sweat both our headsails, fully sheeted on (shhh), nearly to the top, allowing our sails to draw just enough before they had been hoisted fully to give us the small boost we would need to push that vital couple of metres ahead of the fleet. We were flying once more. Trimming like mad we attacked the perturbed water ahead of us, after a few minutes it became clear, we were one of three boats fighting for the lead.

As the night went on the battle for first continued; this was a battle we were winning and were happily pushing further ahead of the fleet. In the distance a bright light began getting closer and closer, we were gaining on what seemed to be Disneyland, moving in the same direction at around 3knots. Getting closer unveiled what was a huge oil rig, under tow by two tugs, trundling towards its next destruction destination. Still racing against the other yachts we made the decision to point below it. Squeezing by, without having to alter course too much we escaped it; even though it was under tow, and not technically an oil rig in its articulated state, we maintained a 500 metre distance to be sure not to gain any more penalty points. Our move below the rig paid off, we came away from it two miles ahead of the next boat, Zhuhai, putting us firmly in first place.

We continued to pass more of these fixed behemoths through the night, accompanied by minion fishing boats, strobing us with laser lights as we cut through their walled defences and boobie trap buoys, deceptively close in the dark. It’s up to us now to maintain this lead, and with the upwind forecast for the next few days to Taiwan we can expect some difficulty.

An exciting start to an exciting race.

Will x