BE careful of you ask for - Clipper Race Level 4 Training

As I wrote in my first English blog post, this is a translation of my Hebrew blog. It is not a google translation! I write it on my own (well, I must use google translation for specific word or phrase). English is not my mother tongue, so forgive me for my grammar and phrasing mistakes.

There are subjects that I do not translate to English and there are subjects that will be unique to the English version.

If you asked why there are no posts of the level 3 training. I can say that we had a very interesting training. We did an acquaintance with the actual race yacht, the Clipper 70 (a 70 fit yacht, more or less 22 meter long). We raise asymmetric spinnaker. However.. the weather was very calm with little wind so there was nothing much to tell.

Level four, that was a completely different story.

The way to level four: Crew Allocation Day

At May 20, me and some of the other Israelis participating at the race had a meetup in the house of Ziv Halevi, one of the participants. We gather in order to watch the live Crew Allocation event. This is the event where we, the crew, finds out about their team. I must say that the event was very tensed: one by one the skippers stood on stage, asked questions by the host. At the same time, each member of the skipper's team got an email message about their allocation.

My skipper was one of the last to be on the stage. Hannah is my skipper and Cameron is our AQP (Additional Qualified Person).

The was to level four: We have a sponsor!

We waited two month between the crew allocation day to the day where we got the message that we have a sponsor. In July, two weeks before the start of my level four training I found out that our sponsor is no other than Washington, DC (well, it is Events DC, the city's sporting and cultural event company.

As my level four training was the fourth and the last one before the beginning of the race, we did the training on a branded yacht!

A training that started in stormy
whether and ended crawling to the finish line of a training race

The fourth training is more realistic than the previous clipper training. The training is done on the actual yacht on which we will sail, lead by our skipper Hannah and her aqp Cameron (Cam for short) as well as the team's crew (in our case we hosted also four of team Qingdao crew as their yacht was full).

And more important, we spend all the training's time at sea.

However, before the training, we got our kit: long technical shirt, crew shorts, an official "Clipper Crew" jacket and of course, the Musto HPX Pro Ocean Smock and Trouser! After some fitting, I got a head shot for the team page and we settled on the yachts.

At the beginning of the training the participants told about themselves and on what they want to achieve in the training. Without hesitation I said that I want to experience a sailing in a stormy sea and to learn how to sail fast. I was not the only one to asked for that.

And indeed Poseidon grant our request: a stormy ocean at the first two day and an extreme tilt in order to achieve fast speed in head winds...

Immediately after the security brief and crew assessment we left Gosport Marina to return only after six days at friday (we did return for a ten minutes stop in order to offboard a wounded crew member).

At the first day, the sea was calm, which allow us to perform mandatory safety drills: man over board (well Bob overboard, a real size man dummy), we transferred Bob from our yacht to another yacht by dinghy and then they send it back to us and we dragged the other yacht and been dragged by her.

At the evening we anchored near the Isle of Wight. Olly and me prepared dinner in the comfort of the anchorage.

The next day was completely different...

Like the blog's Facebook page, to get blog updates. members of the Facebook page will get special updates directly from the ocean via Sat Comm during my participation in Leg 2 and 6 of the race.

Living at an angle...

 

Great video, isn't it?
Even if my phone would have been charged and even if it was one me I wouldn't be able able to shoot this video. Simply because I was in the lower deck of the yacht, cooking and serving food for nineteen hungry people. All that while the yacht is sailing in an angle and the see is high. And most important for me... I felt good.

And this is what happened...

Immediately upon completing a training, Cliff sent Andy and me down to prepare lunch. After all this was our lunch shift. forty five minutes after we went down, we notified Cliff tht the food is ready. However... the yacht just left the Solent and went into the English channel. The winds picked up and so was the sea. We sailed with head winds (close haul as we call it in sailing English) and changed the angles to the wind frequently. The skipper decided that lunch can wait and asked us to keep it worm for an hour or so. So, we found ourselves keeping the food warm while the yacht changes its angle once to the starboard (right) and once to port (left) and vice versa.

In our first port angle, all the plates just flew out of the cupboard (actually a hole in the wall because doors adds lots of weight to the yacht, but they were supposed to be lashed with a special rope that did not exist there!). I put the dishes in a more protected hole. People that sail are probably accustomed to the self balancing stove. However, it seemed to me not balanced enough to keep the high cooking pot that was full with beans in tomato sauce. Due to the limited space on the stove, we put the kettle on the desk which was certainly not self balancing. I found myself, picking up the kettle every time the skipper shouted "Helm to Li" and setting it down on the low side of the galley when I heard "Li Ho".

I noticed that Andy, my partner at all shift, is not feeling well and recommended him to go up to get fresh air. He didn't come back till the evening.

Thus I found myself serving food alone to nineteen people who came down to the "mess hall" in two shifts. Luckily, after that, Ziv helped me with the disk washing and cleanup.

Finally, after two hours, I went up to the cockpit. I found five people, sitting at the aft behind the help, suffering from sea sickness.

Epilogue

When I speak with Aviram, my partner, about sea sickness. I always tell him that everyone can catch it at certain time. Aviram, who is very sensitive to sea sickness, answers quite angrily that i will never understand the terrible feeling of being sick. Maybe he is right... Hopefully...

Nonetheless, I have to say that I was more grouchy than usual when I worked at the galley. This maybe a symptom of sea sickness or this was due to me being stack below for so long?

Acknowledgment

This time I have double acknowledgment to Ziv Halevi, one for helping me in the galley and second for taking the above video (his blog is currently only in Hebrew).

And this is how the galley looks in horizontal state...

Level I and II - Clipper Race Training - Summary

This is, more or less, a translation of my first post in the Hebrew blog. The English blog will include translation of the Hebrew posts, however I'll probably won't be able to translate all. Also, I promise to write some posts exclusively in English.

Resting 

One week (and one day to the English version), since I returned from Britain and at last I found the strength to write. I did plan also to go for a swim this Sunday but haven't done even a single training till this day.

It is probably an energy drop after completing both level one and two of the training for the Clipper Round the World Race and in short Clipper Race.

I'm writing this blog first of all for myself, however I hope that it will give help other readers to get some insight into the race that will take place in the years 2023/24.

Training conclusion

I took both level 1 and level 2 trainings back to back in order to save a bit of money and allot of time. Each training is very intensive, both physically and mentally.

In the next posts, I'll publish some experiences, thoughts and insights. However they won't be ordered chronologically or by training level. The objective of this conclusion is to give a context to the next posts:

Level I

In the level I training, we got acquainted with the yacht, a previous version of the racing yachts (the current yachts are completing the race in the pacific ocean as I write this post). These yachts are 68 fit long (around 21 meters). In this level, there is actually an advantage to crew members with none or little experience at yachting. We, the more "experienced" skippers mainly studied to get rid of the "bad habbits" of operating the small yachts. These habits either won't work on the bigger yachts and, worse, are less safer and can cause injuries to ourselves or others. Totally in this week (or actually six day and five nights), we sailed around 100 miles. At nights we docked mostly at the Gosport marina, home of the clipper race offices, One nights we docked in the Cowes marina at the Isle of Wight.

Level II

At the end of level I, we learnt that one of the level II skippers was found positive to the corona virus. As a result, while in level I we sailed on two yachts with a crew of ten students and two instructors (the skipper and additional qualified person as they call in in clipper race), in level I, we experienced "the real thing": a crew of seventeen students and two instructors.

The second level start with a sea survival course (in a heated swimming pool😉) and continues with four days and three nights on the sea. Watches of 24 hours a day, almost like in the real race. The main objective of this race was to experience 24 hours sailing, however we also deepened our knowledge in sailing and even though it was not in the syllabus, we hoisted the Jeniker.

And now for the pictures...

I would like to thanks Ziv Halevi for taking the pictures. Without him, I wouldn't allot of images from the training themselves. Ziv has an blog in Hebrew.

Musto Monday at the flagship Musto store in Portsmouth

They say I'm XXL, what a surprise

The home model for advanced life belt

And some action...

Till next post....