The entire gang is here! We are operating on all cylinders. JD and Hans arrived on Monday afternoon/evening. It’s good to have the band together again!

The first day of sailing was spent taking pictures of new sails from on and off the boat! The breeze was about 4-5 kts with the occasional monster puff of 7kts rolling through from time to time. The day was very productive. We were actually very happy with what we saw and how our gear looked.

Logistics are a bit off the pace here. When we want to launch our Star boat into the water (which remember costs Y300 one way) it’s a bit more detailed. One of the coaches has to run up and find the translator, then she runs and finds the hoist operator. Then about ten people stand around and what seems to me, they yell at one another. This goes on and on until our boats get either in or out of the water. So far, so good – no damage to any of the gear, but it’s day to day.

Re-fueling our tenders is a process too. First, we have to pre-pay for the gas, we have to guesstimate how many liters we might need then pay for it. We wait about 30 minutes for a pallet jack to arrive near the boat where there are about ten five gallon fuel tanks. This is how we manually fuel our coach boats. Entertaining nonetheless. You know it’s gonna be a great day when you actually get more fuel in the gas tank than you do all inside the tender and in turn all over the sails that are coming out for the day.

The team has been venturing out of the hotel for dinner. We have discovered an Italian place called DaVinci and the chef Salvatore takes great care of us!

It’s funny, the night before I left San Francisco for China, my wife Sally wanted Chinese food. Being the great husband that I am, I agreed. It sounded like a great plan, might as well get a head start on the local food. Since we have been here we have been eating Western food every night, I think tonight I might eat some lo-mein. You guys would actually be impressed, I learned a few Chinese words. I dont know what I am saying, but the locals seem to be impressed!

Today, we might of actually had the best day in Qingdao as far as sailing goes. We docked off at 1300 and sailed down to our race course where we tested and tuned for a few hours. Wouldn’t you know it the sea breeze came in and we headed out to Korea on a long starboard tack. We kept going and kept going and kept going.

We made it into the shipping channel and even managed to get 3 horns from a passing container ship. This was all fun, but the fog came in and the visibility wasn’t very good. Hans kept looking at the GPS a few times, I could see he was getting nervous about being halfway to the United States, so we decided to turn around. It was blowing about 12-14kts and took us about 1.5 hours on a downwind run to actually see land again. We tested on port tack up to the harbor entrance, finished hauling the boats and did our debrief by 1830.

Life is good here. We all miss home and I especially miss my wife, but we only have one week left.

Our new boat has arrived in Qingdao from Germany (by plane) but it’s stuck in customs. With a little luck we might get it in a few days.

The end is in sight for this journey. We all have mixed emotions about it. I say I won’t miss it, but truth of the matter is I have done this for so long I don’t know how I will feel. I will miss the team, the great adventures and life experiences they don’t teach you in college.

It’s going be a great summer here in China…. It’s amazing how a positive attitude puts your mind in a different place…

Just got home from the gym after a long day so I’m off to take a shower and head to dinner…. I am thinking Chinese tonight.

Later

Austin