Position 31 15 N, 128 46 E. On my last night in Qingdao, Fei Du, a Qingdao native and member of the Chinese Olympic sailing team, took me to a spa that around a main pool had perhaps six Jacuzzis for ten people each, filled with various types of tinted water. A label explained what therapeutic benefits were to be found in each. After perhaps two hours of enjoying the muscle relaxation pool, the stress relief pool, and such, we decided we'd had enough hot water and went out to dinner.
What was I thinking?! I've spent the first three days of this leg dreaming of a five minute dip in those Jacuzzis. It has been COLD out here, colder than anything we felt before. And that's without much wind. Imagine what it would be like if we were beating into 35kts of apparent wind, as we were on the approach to Qingdao.
In fact, we've had so little wind that we dropped anchor the first night out of Qingdao, lest the tide take us back to Qingdao. When I went on watch at 6:00am the next morning, Graham was making a snowball. "Frost?" I asked. "No, it's SNOWING!" he said with a school boy kind of glee. I looked all around and saw the first sprinkling of a white dust beginning to cover the entire deck. Two hours later we had two inches.
Thankfully it's warmed up since then and we've got the wind back, hitting 17kts once surfing down a wave today. We'll clear the tip of Japan later tonight.
a video on our plight one day after the race start:
