I'm angry right now. Very, very angry. You know me, you know that's saying
something. Clipper race organizers have just added 1200 slow miles to the
race, probably adding about ten days at sea. The fleet has been moving too
fast, so they've decided to punish us.
Of course, it isn't quite that simple. They have reasons why we need to
delay our arrival to hit the estimated window. For example, there are
visas. My visa doesn't start until 15 Feb, as I allowed for getting in a
bit early, but not this quickly. UK and French citizens have visa on entry
but only for fifteen days. So an early arrival complicates things, but I
think that a good race organizer together with the city of Da Nang as hosts
should be able to work with Vietnamese immigration to accommodate this.
The bigger issue is that Clipper and Da Nang simply aren't ready for an
early arrival, and it's easier to keep us at sea than it is for them to
adjust. This is complicated by the fact that Tet is coming up, but that
just strikes me as more poor planning.
Clipper argue that this was set for a 31-day race, arriving on 17 Feb, and
we're getting a 31-day race, arriving on 17 Feb. This, of course, is
nonsense. There was a race route set. It was estimated for 31 days, but
we've covered the route faster. This is not how real races work. If they
wanted us to sail in circles for 31 days, they should have said that from
the start.
I understand that an early arrival disrupts things, but I'll contrast this
approach with that taken in Airlie Beach. We arrived there early. There
were some welcome events that couldn't be moved forward, so they were held
after we'd been there a few days and maybe were a bit less special for it.
However, the crews had a great time, rested up with the extra days, and
came away with lots of good memories as advocates of the area. Now, what
you have is angry crew, and I'm certainly coming into Da Nang with a lot of
negative associations. And for now, at least, it's taking a lot of the joy
out my of Clipper experience.
If you have any views on how Clipper and Da Nang have handled this, I'd
invite you to share them with the organizers. I don't think it will change
anything with the race, but I do think that Clipper and Da Nang have earned
a certain PR response. Email to Clipper, Facebook, and Twitter are probably
all useful channels, though I understand Clipper have in the past removed
critical comments from Facebook pages they control.
It's possible that this post will lead to my removal from the race. There
is something in my contract regarding negative public comments, but I don't
have the wording with me, so I don't know if this would be covered. At the
moment though, I'm not sure I care.
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