June 2008
Life in China
Hello from Qingdao in China, the site of the sport of sailing for the 2008 Olympic Gams, which kicks off in five weeks…
We arrived here a week ago after two weeks at home following the European adventure. It has been a very hectic few days of logistics, boat prep, sailing, fitness stuff, eating and sleeping.
There was a fair bit of stress involved in the shipping and receival of our three boats. One boat was air-freighted from Europe and encountered a delay due to Chinese customs finding some pills in a bag and also some car bog for boat repairs. We eventually got that boat on Tuesday. Then the other two boats (shipped by sea from Miami and Los Angeles respectively) were released to us late on Friday afternoon, but only after Customs agreed to let us break the seal of the container (as long as we took pictures…??…). (more…)
Nice article….
FYI, see this article on the ROAR website on our Star campaign for the Olympics….
So long, Europe….
Back home now in Avalon, Sydney, after an epic couple of days travelling.
The regatta in Croatia finished anti climactically for us, as we were unable to take part in the last race due to scheduling problems. During the four scheduled days of the event, only three of the six races were held, due to a lack of breeze. That meant the event going into the reserve day, which was not a scenario we had planned for. Our issue was this was mainly that the boat needed to get up to northern Europe in a hurry to get air-freighted to China. (more…)
Croatia. Should have been here last week.
We arrived in Split, Croatia on Sunday 1st June.
The previous week was full of action and work. We left Holland in the very early hours the day following the medal race there. It was a 14 hour drive to the western shore of Lago di Como. Situated there is the boatbuilder, Lillia. What followed for the next five days was some un-planned hard toil on the boat. We had to sort out a little measurement problem on the bottom of the hull, so from there the job expanded into a full fairing of the hull and keel and a re-spray (and a final sand, wet-sand and polish). Basically, approx 14hrs a day for the three of us. The glamour of an Olympic campaign…..not! (more…)