Just after dawn on July 24th, exhausted but delirious with joy from the previous hours in the Force 10 storm, we motored up the Nieuwe Mass river into Rotterdam. As previously arranged, once I had a signal on my mobile, I sent my Dutch friend Daphne an SMS with our estimated arrival time indicated by my GPS.
Living only an hour's drive from the marina we were going to use, I was hoping she'd have the time to gather up her three kids and meet me there. Though the storm had blown us in hours earlier than I had estimated we'd arrive before we left England, Daphne still managed to beat me to the marina. As we maneuvered into our berth, our entire boat was greeted by her children's high-pitched squeals of my name with a Dutch accent from the shore:
"Teee-mo-theeee! Teee-mo-theeee!"
After an afternoon of cleaning and repair (from which I was graciously excused on the account that I actually knew someone in the Netherlands who had actually come down to see the boat in), Uniquely Singapore was prepped for the Wilberforce race the next day. Daphne, her children, and I took a boat tour of Europe's largest port and enjoyed a sumptuous dinner out while the rest of my crew scrubbed, sewed, and washed. I was assured a way would be found for me to make up for my absence.
The next morning our boat's crew lined up along one rail to greet the well wishers along the shore while a fire boat tug gave us a full spray display.
Once out in the North Sea, all our ten boats lined up side by side for a Le Mans style start: with the engines running and only the mainsail up, the boats work to form a perfect line abreast. At a selected time, the engines are cut. One minute later the race is on and crew members are allowed to move forward to erect the two headsails as fast as they can.
It is a spectacular thing to behold such magnificently large ships maneuvering in such close quarters. As the boats are identical, it's tactics, sail trim, and the smoothness of whomever is at the helm that allow any one boat to pull ahead. Below is a five minute video I made of the race start. For most boats, the priority was the training value of the race, not the race itself. Still, with your competition right next to you, it's hard not to want to pass them or hold them off. Furthermore, such proximity allows you to see such immediate results to sail adjustments. In the video you'll see Durban (skippered by Ricky, one of the two skippers I'd asked to be assigned to; the other skipper was Mark, the skipper I got!) slowly pull away from us as the helmsman finds the right waves to surf down and maneuvers to find the optimum angle to the wind. They, like us, had selected one reef in their mainsail. The boat behind Durban had selected two reefs. Despite that much disparity of sail area, you'll see how slowly the differences are apparent.
Thirty-six hours or so later, we finished our race's course (we didn't win) and, after a night at anchorage waiting for the right tide to get into Hull's locks, all ten boats motored into a marina lined with cheering crowds, part of the year long Wilberforce Festival going on in the birthplace and home district of William Wilberforce, celebrating the 200th anniversary of Wilberforce's final success of a life long effort dedicated to ending British slave trade.
A gracious Clipper Ventures employee greeted us at the dock with a case of the local beer, which we scarfed down with delight. We were celebrating the end of our Part C training (the last segment of training for anyone except those doing the whole race, as I am) and the beginning of our adventure together as a team. No longer were we sailing with merely fellow Clipper Venture participants. We were now sailing with our own team. This was it. Anyone on our boat was someone I'll be seeing for all or some of the race that's only 46 days away from starting.
In sailing, rather than indicate the specific speed of wind, the Beaufort Scale was created in 1805 by British Rear-Admiral, Sir Francis Beaufort to generalize 12 different stages. Force 0 represents a calm sea while Force 12 is a hurricane.
Force 10 is defined as winds of 55-63mph and...
"Very high waves with long overhanging crests. The resulting foam, in great patches, is blown in dense white streaks along the direction of the wind. On the whole the surface of the sea takes on a white appearance. The 'tumbling' of the sea becomes heavy and shock-like. Visibility affected."
The 1979 Fastnet race was struck by a Force 10 storm, in which 25 of the 306 yachts taking part were sunk or disabled due to high winds and heavy seas. Seventeen participants drowned. The ensuing book about the race, "Fastnet, Force 10" is probably one of the most well known books among sailors of any type.
A week ago, during the daylight hours of July 23rd, three days into our week of Clipper Venture Part C training (the last segment), our skipper Mark had slowly worked us through the steps of erecting our trysail. The trysail is a small triangular sail that's made of particularly heavy material (photo above). Used to replace the mainsail in the event of a storm, it offers the wind only a token but sturdy surface to blow against. It also allows one's boat to maintain at least some forward speed during a storm, and therefore allow control. The sail is also marked with a large orange circle to aid any rescue forces in finding one's boat, if necessary.
That evening, when Mark received a forecast of a Force 9 Gale for our area that night, he told us re-erect the trysail. We attached it and set up the lines, but left it lashed to the side of the boom. We had three reefs in our mainsail. Perhaps that would be enough of a reduction of sail to make it through the night.
I got off watch at midnight and, through a rare combination of lucky events, somehow had managed to be allocated a full eight hours in my bunk, a rare luxury on any watch system on any boat. I curled up in my bag and expected to sleep soundly until 8:00 a.m. but I woke up at 3:00 a.m.
It wasn't the pounding sea that woke me as much as the squeals of laughter and excitement that I heard coming from the cockpit down the companion way and reverberating throughout the entire boat. Ah, I thought to myself. It's come. The storm is here.
In my bunk I could feel the boat lurch and heave in long, slow motions underneath me and hear the corresponding exclamations above; "Wooo hooooooo!!!"
I'm probably missing something grand, I thought to myself, but it was so cozy and dry in my warm, four-layered bag and I knew it would be spraying water and high winds above. This might be your only chance, I'd tell myself, to helm in a true storm. I'd think this but still I'd pull the bag's open top tighter around my shoulders. Having the opportunity to rest on a voyage like anything we do in those boats usually takes priority over everything.
At 5:00 a.m. one of my crew came to my bunk and shook my shoulder. "Skipper's says you're needed to backup the crew on deck." Thankful for having the decision made for me, I got up and dressed in my foul weather gear. Passing Mark in the Nav Station as I started to climb the companion way steps, I gave him a thumbs up to show I was glad to be called upon and said, "It's not like I was sleeping, anyway."
"I though you might want to get in on this." "I was laying there thinking that very thing," I told him. "Thanks."
The ensuing hours, as we approached Rotterdam for the starting point of the Wilberforce Race, rank up there with the highlights of the year for me, right below the Midnight dance of the bio-luminescent dolphins.
The predicted Force 9 Gale had risen to a Force 10 Storm. Because of the history of the 1979 Fastnet race, the mere words "Force 10" have an aura about them. On the other hand, the Fastnet race had "confused seas,'' that is, seas where the wind and tide moving in opposite directions, which creates huge and unpredictable waves.
Our sea in a Force 10 was surprisingly manageable. When my turn came to take the helm (everybody wanted a chance), I felt more like I was kayaking down huge but very slow moving mounds of water. At no time did anything feel frightening or out of control. With our trysail and storm jib (also a small, strong sail for the front of the boat) hoisted tightly, everything felt quite manageable and, most of all, fun. I understood the squeals of delight that had woken me a fe hours earlier. By the next morning, I had lost my voice, most likely from all the howling with glee I did on the helm during this Force 10.
From time to time we'd see a huge wave approaching and everyone would point and shout, "Yeeee haaaaaa" or something equivalent in either Mandarin Chinese or Malay.
Oh yeah. That reminds me. I haven't announced yet that I've been selected to be on the boat, Uniquely Singapore. And I'm utterly delighted about it. Photos of the boat can be found in my earlier blog entry, London delivery, where I was involved in sailing Uniquely Singapore from London back to Gosport.
Now, back to the story at hand.
One wave caught us unawares and, before we knew it, water was crashing down from the left side of the back half of the boat, pouring buckets of sea water down the companion way and onto skipper Mark below in the nav station on the right side of the boat. A few seconds later, with a look of "Why the hell didn't I do this earlier" on his face, he slide the companionway door insert, known as the washboard, into it's slot to prevent any further water from finding it's way down below.
I was in the cockpit at the helm when that large wave struck and I was up to my knees in water for a moment while the cockpit drains slowly vented the pool back into the ocean. In weather such as this, all people anywhere on deck have their safety lines attached to a hard point on the boats, so no one was at risk of being swept overboard by such waves.
The highlight of that morning and perhaps for even the entire week for me was when Yolyn took the helm from the person I'd handed it off to. Perhaps no taller than 5'2", her gaze was right over the top of the cockpit wheel. Earlier in the week, I'd seen Yolyn at the helm with wide eyes and a look of fearful concentration when the boat heeled over once a bit more than usual in the midst of what might have been only a Force 5 or 6 wind. I think it was her first time ever on helm and I wish I'd had my camera handy to photograph the almost humorous look on her face.
Perhaps 36 hours later, I sat in awe as I watched her on the helm during the Force 10; calm, relaxed, capable, and even enjoying the moment. To witness that kind of growth in any of us (and hopefully myself) is also one of the key aspects that motivates me in the experience of this race.
At dawn we had reached the entrance to the Nieuwe Maas river that leads to Rotterdam and sailed out of the storm while it still howled in the North Sea. We were schedule to arrive in Rotterdam at around noon but the storm had blown us in a bit earlier.
Below is a four minute video I made this morning from footage I took of fellow crew mates at the helm. After I'd had my chance, I rushed down to my bunk and grabbed my camera to come back up and record what I could before the experience was over.
Ever since my daughter Raine was perhaps 18 or so, I'd remind her every now and then that I was eager for grandchildren. Her standard response, appropriately, was, "Daaaaaaad."
Though Raine's still a blast to be with at 24, I still fondly remember the days when she was four or five and would seem to bounce around the house more on her toes than on her feet, eager for any and everything offered to her.
I have a pair of friends I've known for almost twenty years; Susan, since 1987, and her husband Tito, since Susan married him in 1991. I've known their two boys, Gus, 12, and Max 13, ever since they were born. In the ten years they lived near my home until Tito's work took him to Bolivia in 2000, this couple and their children were the four human beings with whom I and my daughter spent the most of our free time.
Susan is from Rhode Island but Tito is from A Coruña, Spain (formerly known as La Coruña until the city recently removed Franco's imposition of it's Latinized form and returned to the original spelling in the local language of Galego).
I've never had the chance to visit with these friends in Tito's native city until this summer, when a vacation from their current residence in Lima, Peru coincided with a few days I had free during these hectic final days before the race. Unfortunately, their oldest son Max was back in the states on an educational program.
I first met their daughter Nina in March of 2005, when she was two and a half years old and only recently adopted from an orphanage in La Paz, Bolivia. Susan and all her children had traveled to Florida to join Susan's mother for a week in Disneyland. Somebody had to ride on the Disneyland roller coaster rides with the boys and it certainly wasn't going to be Susan or Grandma. I got the happy job.
From the start, Nina has always been wonderfully affectionate and engaging. When I next saw her while visiting the family in Peru 18 months ago, she was as warm as ever, and full of as much energy as I could possibly match.
This visit last weekend to A Coruña was no different. Now, just a few days short of five years old, she is quite the handful...perhaps challengingly so to her parents but only delightfully so to me.
The joys of being a grandparent, uncle, or visiting guest is that you get the best of it and little, if any at all, of the worst of it. You show up fresh and full of energy and have nothing but enthusiasm to give. Children seem to know this, and respond in kind.
Nina had a small plastic wheeled vehicle that she would love to ride down a small hill just in front of her house, shouting "¡Corre con mígo!" towards me over her shoulder: run with me!
I'd jog down with her, carry the toy back up, and we'd do it over and over again, neither of us losing any enthusiasm for it.
Where ever we'd go, it was assumed that Nina would sit beside me, be it in the car or anywhere else. If it didn't happen naturally, Nina made sure it happened. I loved it.
Always...always, it seemed, her arms were around my neck.
Though her parents speak to her in both English and Spanish, she'd only spoken Spanish to me when I first arrived. I struggled to respond in kind but my Spanish is very limited. One morning, after I'd finished taking a shower, I opened the bathroom door to defog the mirror to shave. Nina came in and looked around the bathroom in silence for a moment before bursting out, "¡Hay agua por todos partes! Tu has hecho todo mojado. El piso mojado, el tocador esta mojado, las paredes esta mojado. ¡Todo esta mojado!"
Clearly I was in trouble, but there was one word I just couldn't translate, so I asked her how to say it in English,
¿Cómo se dice "mojado" en inglés?
With her tiny hands on her tiny hips, she heaved a tiny sigh with her tiny chest. With a dramatic pause that would have seemed scripted had she not been so young, she replied with a stern gaze,
"Wet."
Ahhh. The shower was the kind that baffles most Americans; a spray on a hose mounted on a removable clip on the wall at about chest level, but no shower curtain. I was the ultimate ignorant and unskilled American, having made a mess of her bathroom.
The next morning I sat in the tub instead of standing and took great care to make sure no water escaped to anywhere but the bathtub. The moment I turned the water off, a small knock sounded very low on the door. Nina wanted to inspect.
I wrapped myself in a towel and opened the door. Wordlessly she came in and looked around. She seemed content until she ran a finger across the top of the toilet's tank. Holding her finger tip up to me with an even gaze, she said only, "Mojado."
It would have been no use explaining to her that condensation probably had more to do with that than my lack of European showering skills, so I just bowed my head and accepted her happy scorn.
Such playful delights abounded the entire weekend. I was in grandfather/uncle/guest heaven.
Our last adventure was a family trip to nearby Santiago de Compostella, the goal of one of the worlds most famous pilgrimages. The next morning I would fly home to England. Nina and I made the most of it, playing games and chasing each other around other sedentary adults like a dog and a cat around two chairs. If not playing together, then at least I carried her as often as I could.
I've always been partial to brown eyes. Something about them just melts my heart.
On July 8th, most of the Adriatic crew disbanded and returned home (Raine and Bill back to the States, Beccy back to her London home, German back to Spain, and Jamie on to the Spanish National Hanggliding championships in the Pyrénées). Gay and I, however, had originally planned to remain a few days in Croatia. Having flown all the way from Fremantle, Australia for this trip, it seemed pointless for her to return after just one week.
At the last minute, the challenges of Croatian train and bus travel as well as the difficulties encountered in trying to rent a car caused us to decide to leave Croatia altogether (we had, after all, already been there a week). We spent Gay's final five days in Europe touring neighboring Österreich.
In German, this name means Eastern Kingdom. In English, we've altered Österreich into Austria.
Again, pictures tell the story better than words.
After taking a train across Croatia and Slovenia to Graz, Austria (birthplace of California governor Ahh-nold), we spent one night there and found a rental car the next morning. We began our tour in ernest in familiar territory for me; Greifenburg (title picture above). This small hamlet of perhaps only 100 houses hosted the 2004 World Hanggliding Championships.
Gay and I spent the second night up on Emburger Alm above Greifenburg and, though no hanggliders were flying the next morning, I took Gay to the launch ramp to give her a view of what it looks like before one steps off into the air.
Below was the scene at the same place three years earlier, during a pilot's briefing just before the day's task begins. I'm seated in the foreground, holding a cup of coffee, sitting between eventual world champion Corinna on my right and the entire Dutch women's team on my left (one of whom will be greeting our fleet's arrival in Rotterdam in a few days).
A storm passed over southern Austria on July 9th. The next morning, a light snow was falling as Gay and I left our 1800 meter high bed & breakfast. She spent the entire day kidding me about just what I had hauled her into when she'd been so warm and comfortable basking half naked in the sun two days before.
As we drove on through the morning, the mountain tops, bald and gray the day before, were dusted in a fresh white covering from the previous night's storm.
On we moved up a valley towards Mallnitz, where we took a car-carrying train through a mountain...
...to emerge at Bad Gastein, renowned for it's natural hot baths.
There we explored rich forests on foot by trail...
...and viewed immense waterfalls by road.
We drove on a bit and spent that night in Bad Ischl before moving on to...
...a full day in Hallstatt, an achingly beautiful village on a lake amidst granite cliffs all around.
There we explored the city by water...
...and foot.
Driving to our next destination that evening, we were 20 minutes away from it when, at 9:30 p.m., an accident brought a five mile section of the autobahn (a section that included us) to a complete halt. We did not get off the autobahn until 4:30 a.m.
Content enough with sufficient food, water, and each other, it was more of an odd adventure than an ordeal. At least no daylight was wasted, we told ourselves. And we also took comfort in the idea that we'd saved the expense of a hotel.
Arriving exhausted in Millstatt at 5:00 a.m., where we had planned to spend two nights, we waited until a hotel allowed us to checked in at 7:00 a.m. After a few hours nap, we moved onto our final adventure: Landskron Castle near Klagenfurt.
Here, during three performances a day, professional animal handlers send various birds of prey on sweeping flights over the audience...
..., so close that people are warned not to try to touch the birds as they pass.
The grand finale is when a Golden Eagle, secretly released before the show had even started and biding it's time overhead and out of sight, was called down to the handler, turning from a speck few people could see into a massive six foot wingspan hurtling down to a spot only a few feet above one's head.
After dropping to the valley below to pick blackberries (visible in the foreground a few photos above) at a harvest-it-yourself farm, we spent a quiet evening on our room's terrace at Millstatt, a city perhaps not as overwhelmingly grand as Hallstatt but still one full of attraction in its peace and quiet.
On July 13th, we moved on; Gay back to Australia by way of one more day in London with her daughter and I onto one last visit to Spain, though to a region I've never been to before.
I'm back, back after 20 days away and three adventures. In less than 48 hours I'm off again, sailing to the Nederlands for the start of a race from Rotterdam to Hull, England.
Tonight I think I can squeeze out the tale of the first adventure, though not so much with words. My friend Bill, one of the participants of the week of sailing off the Croatian coast in the Adriatic sea, wrote me earlier today:
Thank you for one of the most amazing, fun, incredible, beautiful weeks of my life. What an interesting mix of fine individuals. Being a part of the group you had assembled was an honor and a privilege. I learned about sailing, Europe, traveling by train, language, etc. It was too much experience to attempt to capture into one email easily so I won't even try.
Nor will I. These pictures below with only the simplest of commentary will summarize it best.
By the late evening of June 28th, seven of us had gathered by various means and by various routes in Zadar, Croatia, and had moved onto a 37 foot boat.
The key instigators (besides myself) were German, from Spain, who provided irreplaceable sailing expertise, and Jamie, from the States, who provided the driving energy behind a vague idea German and I had last fall of renting a boat somewhere warm and inviting for a week in the summer.
To this mix we added mother and daughter Gay and Beccy from Australia...
...my daughter Raine from the States...
...and Bill from the States as well.
Each night we would dock, often at a small harbor such as this, one that provided only the barest of services.
By day, we would sail a bit towards the next night's destination, always stopping midday for lunch on board and a swim in some forgotten cove.
Then we'd sail on again...
...and dock once more, sometimes at a larger city.
By design the days of sailing were short and we'd linger in the towns, strolling, sipping coffee and tea where it could be found...
...or just exploring ancient streets and magnificent sights.
Only in one larger city did we spend an entire day...
...exploring it with more devotion and inspiration that usual.
Then it was off to the sea again, where the natural beauty of the landscape would captivate us for hours...
...claiming vast stores of digital media amongst all our cameras.
Always, though, the theme was to move at the pace we wanted, which most often was quite slow and relaxed.
While Gay stretched and did sun salutations above, Bill found a huge cliff that look like a promising jump. German rowed the small dinghy around to the face of it and used a mask to check the depth and safety of the water. Once German signaled it was safe, Bill leapt. His point of departure is just above the top edge of the photo here. We estimate it was at least 60 feet, perhaps more.
His landing was safe enough but when a twinge of discomfort later appeared in his neck, Gay, a massage therapist (as is her daughter), offered her gifts.
German's skills, knowledge, and experience were indispensible.
Even so, everyone who wanted one got a chance to take on any role.
German came up with the idea for one of the simplest and yet most profound experiences of the week; a swim in the open ocean, miles from the shore, with no discernable bottom below.
Bill wasted no time in leaping into the opportunity.
It was breathtaking, almost mystical.
Besides wind and water, the other constant was food and drink.
Sometimes it was a casual ice cream during a stroll.
Sometimes it was a dish prepared on board.
Sometimes it was a fabulous meal on land. In this one particular location, it was a fabulous server. We grew to love Lena so much we returned to this island for two nights, mostly just to see her again.
We got to share two dinners and two breakfasts with her. Of the experiences with people, she was by far the treasure of the trip.
