Level 3 Training

Day 1

After staying on the Isle Of Wight for a few days between training weeks I was so very ready for level 3 on the 22nd Of May. this date happens to be my Mothers birthday (Happy Belated Birthday!). I landed in Gosport at around 0800 and walked to where I thought was the correct office for the safety training, turns out they own more than one office block. Hopefully my navigation skills will improve on the water. Today was a more intense safety briefing looking more into the rules of the road and the fact there is no right of way at sea. After the very interesting but extended briefing by David Hartshorn I walked to Gossport Marina with Angie a fellow Unicef crew member on the course to find my skipper for level 3 was Conall again! But this time paired with mate Al (great team). We got onto our clipper 70 called CV 20 also known as the Liverpool boat from the 2017/18 race. We then got stuck into finding out everything we could about the layout of this beautiful vessel from bow (pointy end) to stern (blunt end). I have to say the Clipper 70’s have a much better layout compared to the Clipper 68’s that I have been training on previously there is a vast improvement, it just makes sense. The sail locker is much bigger so all the sails fit, the crew bunks are aft (behind) from the mast so your not bouncing with the waves in your bunk as much, the galley is open and much more sociable, the Nav station is in the stern under the helms so they can communicate directly, there’s two helming stations (steering wheels) one for each tack (side of the boat) with two rudders and then there’s the deck; I’ll get to the deck later. We Manually inflated our life jackets on deck in the evening sun ready to see if they are still inflated in the morning, no one wants a dodgy life jacket. Now for bed in the mid top starboard side bunk.

Day 2

After a fantastic nights sleep (no snorers!) we had breakfast for 0700. We got put into our watch teams to split the on deck (deck checks, steering checks…) and below deck (cooking, engine checks, bilges, cleaning) jobs for the week. After this we had a deck walk talking about the layout where everything is from bow (pointy end) to stern (blunt end) then went over winch handling and line orders on the jammers. Jammers are a mechanism that the halyard lines (pull sails up and down the mast) and control lines (lines that change the shape of a sail edges) run through, it acts like a wedge putting pressure onto the line cause it to jam stopping the line from running freely unless released. As crew you need to know the order of the lines without looking at them because at night in the pitch black and rain you cant see the lines to figure out which ones which. The snake pit is a much nicer place to be on the 70’s its just so fluid you can run lines from one side of the boat to the other without any obstacles. There are also two grinding stations so four people can be grinding up the mainsail or yankee at one time making it faster and easier. We did a dry Man Over Board drill to refresh our memories with Steph as our swimmer a dry Bob was retrieved successfully. After deflating and packing our life jackets we were off onto the water for the afternoon to get a feel for the boat and a wet MOB. Getting to the bow of the boat from the stern is a doddle with the jack stays (lines you clip your tethers onto when sailing) on the 70’s a lot less clipping and un-clipping with a constant run. We were also using Spinlock tethers which seem to be easier to use than the standard ones, the jack stays actually fit in the clip. The MOB on the water was not as good as the one on dry land due to too many cooks trying to lead the team confusing the communication but Bob was still retrieved so not bad for the first of many. Back to Gosport after a largely successful afternoon at sea now of to the pub.

Day 3

After Breakfast at 0700 we did our checks on deck and below deck and got the spinnaker out on deck to see it on dry land which makes it easier to explain. We heaved the Code 1 onto the pontoon to stretched out and leant how it is meant to be packed. Its HUGE! With it layed out on the pontoon you can clearly see how it should be packed and who ever put this one away was obviously half asleep on a 45 deg angle down below in the boat so we redid some of the wooling. As explained in my Level 2 training write up wooling is the process used to pack the spinnaker by tying lengths of wool in 2ft sections of the spinnaker. We repacked the spinnaker and set sail aiming to fly it. We flew the spinnaker successfully and even did a few gybes with the wind being kind it wasn’t to eventful. When we dropped the spinnaker we did the letter box drop taking the lazy sheet (lazy line controlling the spinnaker) between the boom and the mainsail scooping it into the companion way (stairs to below deck). Whilst the rest of the team were learning to pack the spinnaker below deck with Al I stayed on deck with Connel and had a good while helming the Clipper 70 getting a feel for a boat with two rudders. The rudders don’t sit vertically to the hull they splay out to encourage the hull to sail on its side chines when sailing into the wind. A chine is a small section of the hull on either side of the hull that runs in line with the rudder or at least they do on the 70’s. When the boat is sailing up wind on its chime it has a smaller area of the hull in the water witch creates less drag. If the rudder on the much wider 70 were in the centre like the 68’s it would have all of the hull in the water creating a lot of drag slowing the boat down hence why they have two rudders and chines. The chines also cause the boat to sail at 45 degrees more constantly making it much harder to move around below deck. After wooling the spinnaker a lot of the crew were feeling a little weary luckily we were heading back to port. We noticed when we came back that the Ensign flag had got stuck up the mast so I jumped at the chance to climb up the mast and retrieve it! I now know climbing harnesses are not so comfy.

Day 4

Breakfast at 0700 and straight into our watch checks setting out early onto the water today. We focused on our reefing drills today splitting into our watch teams doing the drills with four crew members to show you that you don’t need the whole team to complete the drill. Once we got into a rhythm we realised we didn’t really need four crew members and after Conall and Andrew (Canadian crew member) demonstrated you only actually need two people. It’s amazing how fluid a team becomes when everyone knows their own individual jobs. Today we also did a racing headsail change from a small Yankee 3 to the Yankee 2. This was made to be realistic because in the race you are only aloud to do a racing headsail change from a smaller sail to a larger sail not the other way around. As bow women with Gary I hanked (clipped) on the larger yankee sail below the the flying yankee 3, one of the brass hanks got jammed open but it was nothing that WD40 a rubber mallet and brute force couldn’t solve. Then we tied a sail tie (spare rope) between the two fore stays (metal strands that the sails connect to) ready to transfer the yankee 3 hanks onto when we dropped the sail. once we had dropped the sail fully the halyard is transferred to the next sail and the sail is hoisted. Bowman is a very dangerous place when carrying out this task because you are right on the tip of the bow wedged between the fore stay and the pulpit (metal frame at the front) if its a gale force wind going into the waves whilst throwing it down with rain its so easy to just fall off. For all of those reasons I seem to love the position of the bowman because its just so much fun! We had intended to get into port a little earlier than we did but the channel through into Portsmouth had been closed due to the returning ship HMS Queen Elizabeth this gave us two hours to kill with MOB drills. Due to this we didn’t get back to port until late into the evening but did get to see quiet a spectacular ship pass us close. This wasn’t such a problem seen as we were in need of fuel so we just stayed on the fuel dock overnight.

Day 5

Up for 0700 and straight out after food! The plan was to head down wind straight away hoist the code 1 and drop it then go back up wind to allow a second downwind leg but you know what plans are like. We set off down wind, got the mainsail up then the staysail and then the yankee now for the spinnaker. the wind had picked up to around a force 5 so it was decided we would be using the code 2 spinnaker instead of the code 1 that the team had packed away. I was on the bow team with Gary and Andrew trying to set up the spinnaker on the fore deck before hoisting it. There was a little confusion between communication from skipper Conall to the fore deck he said “Take the sheets outside everything” so we did but he kept saying it. First mate Al came onto the fore deck to see if he could see the problem but it wasn’t until Conall came up that we could see what he meant. What he meant to say was take the sheets outside everything but the foreguy’s so after we had corrected ourselves we went for a hoist. We got it half way up the mast and the halyard got caught around the 2nd spreader DISASTER! We had to drop and gather it onto the deck ready for another hoist. We hoisted it a 2nd time and guess what it wasn’t our day it happened again! So we dropped it again and 3rd time lucky we finally hoisted it fully and set it. There was a huge cheer from the snake pit and the fore deck team were knackered but no time for rest because the stay sail needed dropping and the spinnaker needed trimming. After we had realised we had taken way too long to hoist the spinnaker we had nearly crossed the channel to France so we quickly dropped the spinnaker and turned around heading for home. Unfortunately the wind had picked up touching a force 7 and the tide was against us so we put the mainsail to reef 2 and battled against the waves this is where the clipper 70 helm lets itself down. There is a large delay from you turning the helm and the boat going in the direction you want it too which makes it quite hard to control against the waves especially with heavy weather helm (when the wheel is hard to turn). After packing the spinnaker away in the bow of the boat we managed to get back to port early enough to go to the pub one last time, result!

Day 6

0730 Positively a lye in! We jumped straight into the deep clean early under the watchful eye of Aileen we cracked on ticking of the list of jobs to do with ease. I cleaned the sail locker leaving it spotless. After helping with some other tasks we completed the deep clean in record time and zoomed of back to derby on bank holiday Monday with no traffic! level 3 has been a blast with a fantastic team of people and gorgeous weather. Next I have level 4 with my race skipper Ian Wiggin I can’t wait.