43 kilos of pasta...

The last week and a half has been filled with mounting excitement here in San Francisco. Initially this was a mixture of sightseeing and also seeing the various yachts coming into port after their huge journey of over 5000 miles from China. The crews look exhausted after the most challenging leg of the race. My team's boat Switzerland, or Heidi as we know her, has fared well and has arrived without any sail damage. However the UV light has started to affect most of the fleet's sales and we must be watchful to ensure no rips develop. After a deep clean, many of the crew went off to hotels for rest and recuperation.

Meanwhile, we new crew members started our roles by heading off to shop for food to get us to Jamaica. It is not often that one's shopping list includes 43 kilos of pasta and a similar amount of rice. We then spent almost a day dividing all the food into 30+days and putting this into bags to stow away all over the boat.

A further day was spent on a refresher sail for all the new crew members. This was very useful as some of us last sailed over 9 months ago. Most of the training came flooding back quickly.

Heidi is now pretty much ship shape and today we learned which watch we will be in and who we share a bunk with. We were also briefed on the race and associated info for our journey to Panama. 3300 miles of sailing over about 21 days. Initially we will get good following winds but these will fade at Mexico and the increase in temperature will become challenging.

I have just had my last dinner on land and will get some sleep in order to get on the boat by 8am. We slip the lines at 10am and take part in the Parade of Sail prior to the race start at the Golden Gate Bridge. What a privilege. So the phone will be off and emails will be scarce. My adventure and challenge is just hours away.

NOTE: For those reading this via email update, don't forget to visit the blog at https://malclipper.blogspot.com where you can pledge support via donations to Malcolm's chosen charities - the Bobby Moore Fund tackling bowel cancer; the James Whale Fund for kidney cancer; and Prostate Cancer UK.