Gee's Sailing Diaries: Part 9

The Finish Line

The final few days of the race were pretty tense. Had I not been a part of it, I almost wouldn't believe we were having the comeback of our lives.

Seemingly fitting for the rest of my life experiences, I found myself on a boat that was good in a crisis. As heavy metal now graced our Bluetooth speakers, there were several crew who argued that no other music could be played. Despite being tethered on, one crew member unfortunately got washed halfway down the deck from a giant wave which crashed over the side of the boat. Thankfully, a light knee sprain was the only injury that occurred. Round-the-world crew members maintain that the waves we experienced at that point were some of the biggest waves in the entire race. We regularly took shelter, braced against the cockpit as the cold water covered us and found every single gap in our foul weather gear to penetrate and soak the skin. It made a welcome change of pace from the rest of the race so far and despite the occasional heart-in-mouth moment, we enjoyed reaching some great boat speeds surfing down these giant waves as they picked us up and threw us about.

There were erotic poetry readings over Bluetooth headsets, approximately 300 cookies devoured in about 48 hours, cabbages smuggled overboard whilst the skipper wasn't looking and a failed attempt at fishing. There was snoozing in the galley because that was better than lying in the top bunk with no airflow, the meal plan was thrown out the window and the hilarious struggle to turn sausages whilst someone else was holding the oven tray with the boat at a 40-degree angle. Deep conversations and radical honesty and spending an hour sat right on the bow of the boat, in the middle of the night, in the middle of the ocean, trying to carry out a racing headsail change. In the quiet of the night, save for the waves, the swell of the ocean and the warm sea breeze in my hair, I couldn't see a single thing in front of me but I had the entire boat behind me.

In the final 24 hours of racing, we suddenly found ourselves in 8th place. We had caught up over hundreds of nautical miles and left two boats far behind. One boat was still on the horizon behind us. And on the horizon directly in front of us, was another. With fire in our bellies, I am almost entirely certain I laid a hand on every single sail on that boat in those final 24 hours. Within the final 12 hours, I must have helped with about 8 different sail changes in a desperate attempt to keep those behind us, far behind, and to claw back those in front. With barely minutes to spare before we crossed the finish line, we overtook the book in front of us to make it into 7th place. After almost 5000 nautical miles of racing, crossing the equator and two seas, there were just seconds between us crossing the finishing line. Elation. Relief. Appreciation. Not a single crew member felt disappointed by our result and many of the other teams sent their congratulations for a fantastic race. Their recognition of our achievement meant a lot.

After crossing the finish line, it was time to prepare for reaching land for the first time in over three weeks. We tidied the cockpit, cleared things away below deck and prepared to turn the engine on. As there is no wind in Ha Long Bay, we had a 4-hour motor ahead of us to reach the safety of the harbour, on an engine that we had bodged back together using a railing from the galley, tin foil and some epoxy putty. We had no idea how well it would last, so one of the boats stayed nearby in case we required towing back into port. The engine ticked over smoothly and we continued to square away the boat; taking sails down and packing them away, getting out the fenders and lines we would need to moor up on the pontoon and hoisting our battle flags and sponsor banners. Being the end of February in Vietnam, it was springtime, and as is common for Ha Long Bay at that time of year, clouds covered the land and the bay was shrouded in an eerie but magical mist. Islands loomed at us from all sides and black kites swirled above us. We passed tankers and tourist boats and unfortunately lots of litter. With one hour to go before reaching land, a splutter came from the engine. A vibration rolled through the boat that wasn't there before and the tone of the motor changed. Below deck was filled with a smoky haze and a burning plastic kind of smell as the epoxy putty started to cook.

Thankfully, it held. We were greeted on shore by a small party of race officials and some crew supporters. Celebratory beverages were shared, race-finish interviews were conducted and, finally, we were allowed to grab our belongings and disembark. It felt a little strange being back on terra firma – for the ground not to be moving beneath me was a little strange at first but my body quickly readjusted. A small group of us walked to a nearby hotel, checked in and promptly set about cleaning the three weeks of sailing off our bodies and our belongings. However, racing doesn't stop there. For the next three days, I dutifully took myself back down CV21, dodging local news crews and having my picture taken by local people interested in the race, to help get her back in shape for the next part of her journey. This included deep-cleaning every inch of her before ogling at our engine handy-work as it was removed and replaced with a new exhaust system. I later found out that our boat was the last boat of the entire fleet to still have the old exhaust system which failed, but that's by the by! Skippers and engineers from the other boats gathered around to hear about our team of make-shift scrap-heap-challengers and offered us high praise for a solution we were rightly proud of. I helped re-tie knots and lashings, replace oil filters (who thought that an engine design where the oil filter is upside down was a good idea?!), hot-knifing ropes and lines, cleaning ball bearings and stripping, cleaning and replacing the steering mechanism. For those three days, I felt like I truly knew that boat, like I was putting a part of me back into her. But I think a lot of that was actually just procrastinating from the real decision I had to make.

The delay of race start due to tropical cyclone Kirrily meant that my post-race travel plans were at risk. If I continued with the second race of the leg – to Zhuhai, in China – I would likely miss out on some of the plans I had already made to go overlanding through Vietnam and Cambodia through to Bangkok, due to the change in timings. Racing (and the weather) is unpredictable, and I always knew it would be a risk going into it. I had so much of southeast Asia that I wanted to see and it felt wrong to go all that way to just see a snippet of Ha Long Bay in the off-season. I'd heard stories from some of the other crew about how they felt like, although they were sailing around the world, they weren't actually seeing any of it and that was something that I knew I didn't want to be my experience too. But not sailing to China meant leaving the boat and the crew early, not getting the opportunity to sail in an all-female watch (which was suspected the first and only time an all-female watch has been had on the Clipper Race) and not spending another week out on the water or seeing Zhuhai. I had to decide whether or not going travelling meant more to me than completing the leg and going sailing with a fantastic group of people.

What would you have chosen?