Level 3 training

Honestly, Level 3 got off to a disappointing start.

First, there was a full day ISAF course. It was dull, dull, dull. Yes, all the safety lessons are important, but almost everything we were told, we'd heard before. What kind of new information did we get? Well, I did learn that you get a flow rate of 500l of water per minute through a three-inch hole... but what does that change? I would have known that a three-inch hole -- hell, any hole -- was bad news. There was some talk of how to improvise a mast fix or a rudder, but that would really all depend on the specific of the circumstance, what broke, and what you had left. Maybe the point was really just to reassure us that all this was possible, so we won't panic if something were to happen? Long day, lots of stories, one graphic picture of a 'de-gloved' finger, but really not sure what I got out of it all.

Next disappointment was finding out we weren't going to be on the 70's. We'd all been waiting to get on those boats, the ones we'll actually be racing, to learn what they're like. The main new lesson was supposed to be the spinnaker, and we were still going to learn that on the 68’s. But there's also a lot to learn about how the 70's are laid out -- winches are in different places, lines run differently, the whole layout below is different. Plus, we just really wanted to get on the cool new boats. It certainly wasn’t the end of the world, but but it was disappointing.

On a more positive note, it was great to see Christian, Banno, and Sam from Level 2. I started to feel a bit of that sense of “community” with these familiar faces. Also, when we got to the boat, it turned out Matt was going to be one of the instructors again, and I was really looking forward to sailing with him again. The other instructor, Al, seemed good as well, more low-key, but he was feeling a bit under the weather.

Again, the crew was a really interesting mix of people. I finally met my first teammate from Telemed, Tony, a Canadian who had been born in Viet Nam and is doing the full round-the-world in honor of the boat people. Aside from being a really nice guy, he seems like he’ll be an excellent guy to have along when we get to Da Nang! Dan is a UFC commentator and ex-fighter who goes by “The Animal” professionally. He talked a bit about the challenge of moving from an individual sport to a team sport, but turned out to be a great teammate and just a really nice guy. Terrance is a property developer and an owner of a few Brasilian BBQ places in Yorkshire. Karim is a wind farm engineer who was, ironically, going to be on a boat sponsored by a coal mining company. One guy (I’m drawing a blank on his name just now) was from Aruba, adding to the small country list from my Level 2 training. His sister is an Olympic sailor. I tried to impress him with my Aruba knowledge by mentioning Andruw Jones, the baseball player… who turned out to be from Curacao. Rich is the official cameraman for the race. He’ll be along on one boat or another for the whole race. Overall, another nice bunch of people, if a bit less banter than we’d had on the last training week.

I will say that this week I met the first person who didn’t pull their weight. To this point, I’d occasionally had issues with people who were too ‘Type A’, they wouldn’t listen to other people, they’d jump to get involved in everything, often leaving whatever they were doing unattended. It didn’t happen a lot, but there would maybe be one-in-ten who got like that. This person, on the other hand, just didn’t get involved. On the last day, when everyone else was cleaning the boat, she had an excuse to leave. And I understand she’d done the same on other training weeks. I only mention it because it was unique. Literally every other person I’ve met on Clipper has been really good about doing their share and looking for more.

The first day was some pretty basic sailing, just reefs in and out, some tacking, some gybing. It wasn’t really slick, but it was the first time working together as a crew, and it takes a while to learn to work together. The second day was similar, but at the end we got a bit of a kick in the ass from Matt and Al, telling us that we weren’t as sharp as we should be for this stage in our training and we were a bit lackadaisical about things. Personally, I put some of that down to Al’s low energy. But at the same time, we really could have been pushing ourselves more.

And the following day, we did. Things picked up a lot. We eventually got the spinnaker up, which was very cool and meant we were finally learning new stuff. It’s a tricky sail, for a number of reasons, which I’ll get into in another post. It also needs to be wooled after use. Wooling is a process of rolling it up from the three corners, tying the rolled up bits with light wool thread, so you turn the triangle of the sail into a ‘Y’. Then, when you hoist it, the wind fills it and pops the wool thread. Anyway, wooling is pretty hard work, and it happens down below, where conditions are hot and stuffy. Not the most fun part of sailing, but everyone got stuck in. By the end, I felt like we were pretty good with the spinnaker, gybing smoothly, keeping it trimmed, wooling and bagging it when were were done. Still would have been nice to have done it on the 70’s though!

Another thing that occurred to me this week was that I hate cooking on these boats, despite the fact that I normally like to cook. But the galley is just not a good kitchen, and we don’t have good tools, and cooking for 15+ people at a time is never going to be good anyway. The stove is too small to get much going. Water takes forever to boil. The knives are dull. The sink is too small to get the big pots in. And you’re trying to do this all while everything is tilted 30 degrees and you’re bouncing around. We were supposed to be making some stir fry, but we ended up basically just stewing the beef and vegetables together then pouring some jar sauce over. I was thinking if we would accept slightly worse food, we could save an enormous amount of effort. We could do a few hot meals with freeze dried pouch food, like from back in my backpacking days and do a lot of meal bars. Maybe after four straight weeks of that, not to mention several months overall, I’d come to a different conclusion on the effort/quality tradeoff.

We were all staying around to do Level 4 immediately afterward. Tony, Terrance, and I got in a few beers at the local pub, where we also met a few other Telemed folks, then finished off with a curry. So much for getting in a good night’s sleep before Level 4! But still a good way to finish another good week of training.