Level 4 Training 12/7 - 19/7/11

For the first two days I stayed in Portsmouth at the Royal Maritime club. It was very convenient to the ferry to cross over to Gosport. The venue has been there for many years with images of ships of the royal navy from the past, HMS Victory to the present day. The Prince of Wales is the patron.
As well as guests like myself we had officers from the Sudanese Navy, Australian Navy and Royal Navy in attendance, with the dining room set up as an officers mess. Tariff was £60 a night including full English breakfast.
Day 1 (July 12) - visited the Clipper office so they could copy my passport info, visas for Brazil & USA plus the yellow fever certificate. Also revised the standing orders contained in the sailing contract, picked up the Clipper apparel, a polo shirt & the "Henry Lloyd oilskins" salopettes and jacket. The top or jacket is a smock type that you pull over your head - it seems a bit awkward but they say it is far more waterproof than the type with a zip in the front. An easy few hours just making sure all is in order.
Day 2 - attended the radar course held in one of the Clipper training rooms. The aim of the day was to teach us to use small boat radar to assist decision making in collision avoidance, pilotage and navigation.
Learnt about: switching on and setting up, understanding the picture, refining the picture, radar reflectors, collision avoidance, fixing position by radar, pilotage by radar.
The instructor made the course interesting and palatable for what some might say could be as boring as bats*#t!
I' m pleased to say I passed It is a pleasure to look at the new digital radar screen with colours rather than the traditional green screen.
Day 3 - met the crew on board " Gold Coast" Australia for the start of our Level 4 sailing training. I had met some of them at the crew announcement day on the 30/4/11 but this was the first time that I would be sailing with the guys.
There were 18 people on board including our skipper Richard Hewson. I had sailed with Richard before on Level 1.
At the first team meeting on deck in the morning, Richard announced we would be taking part in a number of races over the next few days against the other 9 yachts in the fleet for the round the world race. Spinnaker work and gybing was on the agenda, with racing conditions and 4 hour shifts 24 hours a day to be the norm for the next few days.
We were to set sail for Cherborg in France (the marker was a fairway buoy), then turn north to Eddystone Lighthouse of the coast of England near Plymouth, then east to the "Needles" (the southern-most point of the Isle of Wight) with the finish off Cowes on the Isle of Wight. The race route was some 500 nautical miles.
Quite a few of the crew have only experienced calm conditions during their training and they were about to find out that the ocean ,wind and rain can change one's outlook on life at sea.
The English summer forgot to send the sun and most of our week it rained with 35 knot winds and moderate seas. We rated it as force 7 or 8.
Luckily I was not sick and can thank the conditions in Tasmania as a pre cursor to what we experienced for the week. Three of the crew were sick, two of them in their bunks for 2 to 3 days.
From my perspective I still haven't got all the names of parts of the yacht and evolutions off pat but was reasonably happy with what I had retained from previous training sessions. We were split into 3 watches with 4 hours on then 4 hours off then 4 hours on standby. It was cold because of the wind, with a full moon in the evening. The English summer means that it doesn't get dark until 10.30 or so in the evening and it starts to get light at about 4am. Combine this with a full moon and you feel as if the earth never gets dark.
The start gun was fired at 2pm in the Solent near the NAB tower with one of the Clipper 60' training yachts as the other end of the starting line. It was a Le Mans start with all the crew standing behind the primary winch - the only sail already hoisted was the mainsail. On the gun you walk or jog forward to your assigned position and do your part to get the yacht moving.
The yankee & staysail are hoisted simultaneously, running backstays adjusted, mainsail trimmed, yankee & staysail are trimmed with trimming starting from the bow first. We got away to a great start going across the start line first.
We turned the fairway buoy off the coast at Cherborg just on dusk and as we neared out of the gloom came two other yachts - we rounded in 3rd place with only a few hundred metres separating us after some 9 hours since the start.
The seas had been building since we left the Solent and we had been pounding into rolling waves with the wind almost abeam of our heading. The change in direction meant that we had much the same, with the only difference being that we were now heading into the darkness, and the conditions always seem worse in the dark.
The ‘mothers’ had been busy in the galley during the day and for some the heeling over of the boat had caused some difficulty in food preparation. However their tenacity prevailed and we ate Chicken Marsala for tea with rice.
We were finding out where the yacht leaked; the front hatch over the rope locker, the port side when heeling over produced a steady waterfall above several bunks and above the lounge area. These areas were recorded and marked with the view that they would be an area of focus and repair when we were back in port. The portside head was out of commission and was also put on the repair list.
It was all good stuff, sleeping from 8pm to 12 midnight was our off time then we were on deck fully dressed as the back-up crew. You need at least 10 crew to change tack under difficult racing conditions - yes you could do it all with only a few but you don't want to lose momentum or a place every time you change direction.

At the Eddystone Lighthouse (pictured left) we went around the marker in 2nd place - from the regular radio reports we were advised that several yachts had now pulled out of the race. Injuries, sea sickness amongst most crews was prevalent, gear breakdowns like no gas, ripped sails were common. We were sailing downwind, the spinnaker up and cruising down the waves. You had to be very careful on the helm that you didn't gybe. It was exhilarating and we were going to the final mark. We felt good that we as a unit were keeping our food down (the ‘mothers’ had baked bread, cookies and cake all as experimental meals for the big trip) and overall we were functioning as a capable crew.

'The Needles' off the Isle of Wight

We arrived at the final marker at about 1am in the morning with The Needles off the Isle of Wight on our bow and the hooter signalling the finish of the race and confirmation on the GPS indicating that we had passed the finish line first. YIPPEE we won.!!!!!!
We anchored on a buoy off Cowes later that night - it is so easy to climb into the bunk when you are not heeled over. We woke up at 8am the following morning. The schedule for the day was a series of exercises on safety; MOB drills, fire drills with the fire pump, steering with the back-up steering mechanism & radio drills on maydays (the signal for ‘grave and imminent danger requiring immediate help’ and pan pans (the signal for an urgent situation of a lower order problem such as a mechanical breakdown or a medical problem).
The following day we did literally hundreds (OK, maybe it was only 99) but it seemed like 100's of tacks, reefs, sail changes - big to small, small to big, up & down from below dragging sails backwards and forwards. Every time we changed sails we had to flake them on deck. What a tiring day, there is no glamour in humping sails up and down the main companion way with the yacht well heeled over and a moderate sea running. We started to find out a bit more about ourselves - most passed with flying colours.
One more tack the skipper said “and if it’s perfect in every way we will go into Cowes and send two crew members for fish & chips”. Three more goes and we were done. It was about 9pm and we were starving - we phoned and headed for Cowes. We just touched the wharf and the 2 runners were off for our food. A few minutes later they were back and we were heading down the Solent under power, fish & chips distributed to all on board, heading into Gosport at the end of a solid few days training.
The training that we received on Level 4 was exactly what we needed - it was repetitive, trying at times with the sea conditions, but a reality check for everybody on what we can expect for the up and coming challenge. We are learning to relate to one another and had started to bond as a team - we certainly will be counting on one another as time goes on.
Over the next few days tied up at the marina we would be focusing on carrying out the repairs and general maintenance that need to be done before our start on the 31/7/11.