TRAINING DAY 2

Sydney Opera House 

Preparing Arctos for the safety inspection:

We split up in teams of 2 or 3 and worked through the equipment on Arctos.

The 2 volunteers for the radio and navigation part Kristin and Branden got introduced from Pete into the secretes of HF and VHF radio operation and working with the Chart plotter and the rest of the navigation stuff. In the race we have to do at certain points reports about the status of crew and boat via HF. If not done in time we would face the risk of disqualification. Kristin and Brendon, please don’t forget  your reports.

2 important switches everyone on board needs to know are the MOB ( man over board) and the distress call button.

Pete on the Nav table.

Emily and Charles took care of the “under deck” stuff ( a lot). I enjoyed your briefing.

Tomo, Henry and I (the bow team) checked the deck from bow to stern while jung Pete ( the other mate.  Hmmmm we should find a nickname for at least one of the Pete's) and Jason had to fix some problems on the emergency tiller.

We started with checking all the equipment and preparing the boat for the safety inspection in the afternoon. The inspectors have been quite picky and almost all of the safety equipment had to be showed. On a race like that they normally would do random checks. But we were well prepared and everything was in order. Thank you flying fish.  It certainly makes sense to have tight safety requirements if you look into the history of this race. Storms are almost guarantied. And this is what we want to see.

Afternoon around 4PM. Done with safety inspection and still no new mainsail!!! This is a bit annoying but we made the best out of it.

We used the time to work the 2 storm sails, the trysail (on the forestay) and the storm jib(on the baby stay). If we sail the trysail we need to tie down the boom and lash it on the port side in order to have it out of the way. It is a bit tricky since our boom vang (or kicker) is holding the boom up and we have to manually disconnect the boom vang from the boom.  Before we disconnected the vang Pete the jung tried to bring the boom down with his weight on the boom, but the boom bang was stronger. 

This work on the vang could be a challenge in stormy conditions.

Boom down

Furthermore we used the time for the emergency procedures and drills. We started with the engine fire followed by galley fire and electrical fire.

We all certainly can handle now the deployment of our 2 life rafts.

This emergency training has as preparation for the Sydney – Hobart a special “reality-touch” as we all know examples of emergency’s and accidents which happened in this race.

Finally we did some “almost real sailing”. Still no main but we did drills on headsail and staysail operation. A first feeling of confidence starts to grow. It will be interesting for tomorrow when we start to work the spinnakers.

View from the top of the mast. I took the opportunity for this pic while doing the mast check.

I decided to begin introducing each crewmember individually. I’ll do that not in a ranking or seniority order but just as it comes.

MEET THE CREW

Charles, our aussie has the honor to start.

He is a frequent regatta sailor doing a lot of the Sydney - Saturday races and is well known and respected regatta sailor.  He also likes to join the light offshore race“Sydney short”. When he moves with his tattooed leg around on the boat you can see that he knows what he is doing. He will be one of the mast crew.

Charles is preparing the "storm jib" on the baby stay. Can you see his tattoo?

Jason, our mate from Ireland has a huge sailing experience as instructor and races since more then 20 years.

“ Jason, looking at you, you must have started very early with sailing.”

He did 2 Atlantic and 2 Pacific crossings and also sailed the carribean, the Mediterranean and the Scottish waters.

Jason is also an expert for the bass strait and he loves the solo sailing like mini Transat( Trans Atlantic as solo sailor).

I would not like to miss his experience on our race.

Jason is checking and demonstrating how to do a possible man over board procedure.

Some of our Competitors