One thing I've learned from being involved in this voyage and Sir Robin's last year is how media-driven so much is in a race this large. We have finish lines drawn in the water which, when your GPS tell you that you've passed them, might raise a few whistles and cheers on the boat, then we unceremoniously go about dropping the headsails, centering the main, tidying up lines, turning on the motor, and heading for the port (usually around 10-20 miles away).
The real show for the media, however, is our entrance into port, often with one or two helicopters covering it all form the air.
When we arrived in Singapore last January 16th, we didn't dock at Singapore first. To allow a fleet-wide grand entrance into Singapore that had been orchestrated as part of the grand opening of a new marina and the heart of a multi-billion dollar real estate development, all boats first gathered at Nongsa Bay Marina (above), around 10 miles across a small body of water from Singapore.
There we leisurely went about our usual post-race deep clean and maintenance while we waited for the stragglers in the fleet to join us.
As I write this now, sitting in my hotel room in Qindao, China, having finished four days of outdoor work on our boat amidst the ice patches on the dock and the winds of a northern hemisphere winter, looking at those pictures makes me ache for those days in Nongsa Bay. I do love cold weather, yes, as long as it involves snow. The natural beauty of a white blanketed winter scene makes whatever exposure to the cold I might need to endure worthwhile and even desirable.
Here, in the coastal winter of a large land mass, there is no snow but just a biting, aching, wind-blown kind of chill that makes working with one's bare hands on a docked boat excruciatingly painful. Each evening when I've returned to my hotel here in China, I've immersed myself in a shower nearly as long as the one I took the moment we arrived. There, in Nongsa Bay, being finished in the evening meant hanging out by the pool.
Being in port always means taking many (too many for me, actually) opportunities to make up for any culinary deprivation we've suffered on the boat. There on Batam Island one of our crew, Erma, was native to this culture and its unique language and so she treated us to places and experiences we never would have found on our own.
By the time the 19th and it's scheduled events arrived, all boats were in, so we proceeded with our grand entrance into Keppel Bay Marina in Singapore. TV crews boarded our boat and interviewed many of us on the way over, focusing on the five Singaporean natives returning home, such as Diana.
With our boat in the lead position (it was our home port, after all), all ten boats formed two 'V's of five boats each and, escorted by plume spraying fireboat tugs, we covered the short distance over to Singapore and Keppel Bay Marina, constantly encouraged by the flotilla of press boats around us to offer waves to the cameras.
We rounded the final turn and motored in to speeches, cheers, free drinks, free food, and yet one more Clipper Ventures party.
Finally we all were taken to a parking lot where, as arranged by our generous sponsor (Keppel Corporation), we each were given a BMW to use for our week's stay.
I've driven on the left before in England and Australia but my unfamiliarity with a city as congested with Singapore, combined with the stress of driving on the left made the freedom of having a car pointless. Whenever I drive in left drive countries, I must repeat to myself over and over, "Stay left...Stay left...Stay left..."while constantly nodding my head to the left like Saturday Night Live's Will Ferrel and Chris Kattan in, "A Night at the Roxbury" (my daughter will love that mental image).
I left my BMW in the marina's garage for all but one evening (much to the consternation of other boat's crews who didn't have the luxury of any kind of car at all). A sufficient number of events lead by our native Singaporeans in their own cars or British crew members using their BMW's allowed me to enjoy the city without driving in it.
