Sandbanks, wrecks and fishing nets everywhere …

Hamish Hooper blogs from CAMPER about a sleepless night and a burning desire …. 

Since my last report it sure has been a tack fest. I lost count of the number of tacks early into last night. Each tack on these boats is an exhaustive process; it’s not just turning the helm, easing some sheets and pulling on other ones. It can take up to 20 minutes to just get set for the tack moving around four tonnes above and below deck; sails, spares, personal gear, food and any and everything else that is movable on the boat.

This has pretty much been the life on board for the last 24 hours. It’s not hard to equate lots of tacking to very little, if not any sleep. There are a lot of heavy, red eyes around this morning, having barely been shut. But that’s just how hard all of the guys are pushing this last stretch of the leg and how hungry they are to get as far up the leader board as possible, there is certainly no lack of desire to win on CAMPER.

Tacking up the coast from Vietnam in the dark was literally running a gauntlet of sandbanks, wrecks and fishing boats and nets. There were hundreds and hundreds of fishing boats all around us the whole way up the coast. Everywhere you looked there were fishing boats, all with nets ranging from maybe a hundred metres to many miles long.

It amazes me that there are any fish left in the waters here.

To say it was stressful on our navigator Will Oxley would be the understatement of the decade.

The only way you could approach sailing this gauntlet was to make sure you don’t hit the sandbanks, wrecks or fishing boats and hope we don’t collect any fishing nets.

Luckily enough we were successful on the first part, but daylight this morning revealed we had indeed caught a bit of fishing net on one of our appendages, which no doubt did not help our progress overnight. Once rid of it this morning the latest sked revealed we had unfortunately lost vital miles on the two boats ahead of us, but still just managing to hold off our trailing boats. We have 370 odd miles to close this leg out and all of the fleet is charging hard to China.

They say it’s not over until the fat lady sings – well the fat lady is only just eating her pre -performance lamington back stage.

This leg has been a tough one, and by the time we get to Sanya everyone will be well and truly physically and mentally exhausted – they already are. I wouldn’t be surprised if the arrival celebrations consist of one beer and passing out in your bowl of wonton soup.

Here’s a description of Sanya for you:

Sanya- “The Hawaii of the East”
An idyllic tropical city located on the Chinese island of Hainan, the city is known as much for its crystal clear waters as its warm welcome

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GOLDEN QUOTE: “ It was an immense relief for me to tack away from the Vietnamese coast for the final time last night. With poor quality charting multitudes of unlit fishing vessels and miles of nets, not to mention shallow wrecks from the war, the potential for disaster was high. We had some very near misses and ended up hooking up fishing gear a couple of times. Having done all of that with all that we learnt I now feel I am ready for short tacking up the Vietnam coast line the next time we have to do it.”

WILL OXLEY