Race 3 - Day 11
Crew Diary - Cape Town, South Africa to Albany, Australia
11 November

Jie Chen
Jie Chen
Team Qingdao
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In Chinese ancient stories, Phoenix is a holy sun bird who throws herself in the fire every 600 years to burn herself into ashes and be reborn as a more powerful and beautiful new phoenix. I get on board in Leg 3 with the skipper change and adding a new watch as Phoenix, and wonder whether this means all of us will have a similar rebirth in some sense. As to our culture, the phoenix with its elegance and beauty is always impaired with dragon as the symbol of royal families: dragon as the king and phoenix as the queen.

Stories are stories and the story in our boat is like this:

Our Phoenix watch consists of six people: Mark as the watch leader with rich sailing experience, Andrew as round the world crew member responsible for all fixes in our boat, helping with all sorts of engineering works; Jane another round the worlder is Ms. Capable, wherever in cockpit, galley or any other parts of the boat, she is always very organised and efficient; Jeremy, who chose Leg 3 for its challenges and one day joked to us he is out of his mind to choose this leg; Angela, an architect from Beijing, one of the Qingdao Ambassador with three years dingy sailing experience; and then me, also from Beijing, another Qingdao Ambassador. This is the Phoenix watch.

Every night watch, when we sit on boat, watching the sea, no matter if it is with moon risen, star shining or just a gloomy night, the beauty of sea gradually envelops us: the far away waves are like the eyes, happy eyes inviting you to talk to them, closing eyes saying I do not want to talk to you; sometimes just like naughty children playing hide and seek with you. We saw the golden moon rise our watch at the beginning, we saw day break in our watch this morning when we were approaching more east and east.

Every day watch, we enjoy the rich colours of the sea and waves, the parts hitting the edge of the boat are always fresh blue, Tiffany Blue to be exact, just that colour to illustrate the subtlety of the gentle parts of the sea with wrinkles go beyond to fade away into the sea or mix with other waves for another big wave. The blues you can have are grey blue, dark blue, bright blue, and yet the most beautiful part, Tiffany Blue. I have been wondering the original designer of Tiffany Blue must be an ocean lover to capture this very vivid nature colour in ocean.

Besides every single and unique moment of the beauty of sea, I enjoy every one in their own character in the team. Mark is always making a thorough check of the boat from front bow to the stern to get a whole picture of the boat after the watch change, and then help us to know what might happen in our next four hours of watch. When he stands by you to supervise the helm, you just feel safe and confident. He is considerate, in the big waves of our boat in Southern Ocean, when we hit waves one by one like sitting in the swimming pool, he only asks for chocolate not hot water as it might be too difficult for us to pass by to the helming position. Andrew is silent, but always gives you a hand without saying too much. These two people with ages adding up must be over 100, squeezing themselves in the small and hot engine room to work on the generator day by night. If it is in China, we might just call them grandpa and treat them with respect for a relaxed and comfortable retired life. But they are exploring out of the comfort zone to explore further limits of themselves and support us with their rich experience. Jane and Jeremy are always there to help us understand what is happening and how we can help. Angela and I are called Panda Girls by other crew as we tend to crawl more in the unstable boat to keep our balance. And we try our best to help others, maybe just by passing something or helping pulling up the zippers of dry suits for other crew.

The boat life is never imaginable to me before starting on this journey, but I am happy to explore whatever is happening here and see how much I can handle. I miss my Chinese food, and cannot help thinking what type of tea we might bring on board if it is a Chinese one, Black Dragon in the afternoon, Puer in the evening... while, there is another beauty of trying a boat stomach for an international team. I just plan to have my meal list with friends after getting back to Beijing.

When East meets West, cross ocean yacht sailing meets daily life, there comes the beauty of diversity, difference and difficulties which makes the life more interesting. I cannot help thinking if I get the chance to get back to UK to live again, I will be very happy to invite the crew to my house for my nice Chinese cooking, and recalling this part of our life with our children and grandchildren.

By Jie Chen, one of the Panda Girls from Beijing, Qingdao Ambassador Crew