Playing Catch Up

Unlike my fellow crew mates currently working hard to drive the Derry-go-round to Rio (as we have affectionately nicknamed the good ship Derry~Londonderry~Doire), I have fallen behind in posting on the site in recent months. If you attend a Clipper Crew Recruitment Presentation, you receive fair warning that if you sign up for the race, it takes over your life for the duration. Whilst all of us in the room heard the message, I’m not sure that any of us fully comprehended what this actually means.

As well as the obligatory 3 weeks of Clipper race training which pretty much uses up all annual leave, there is the maintenance and theory course, crew allocation, building team websites, official team building weekend, unofficial crew get-togethers, boat preparation week (AKA ‘build a boat’ for this years’ crew), boat delivery trip to race start, race start weekend, then following the race via the race tracker to check on the position of the boat, crew blogs, skippers blogs, organising insurance and gear and preparing to leave your daily life behind for however long you have signed up to race on the boat (6 months for me). Throw into this mix the usual stresses and strains of work, trying to keep up with family and friends, the obligatory pre-Clipper wobble (think we all have one) and other aspects of daily life and things get pretty hectic.

Not that I am complaining, I did after all put pen to paper and sign up for this challenge willingly and with the fullest comprehension of what I was doing. But it does mean that something get put on the back burner, which I have to admit has happened to this blog.

Anyway – I plan to play catch up in the next week or so; until then, a few photos will have to suffice!

Clipper 13-14 Crew Allocation Picture

Crew Allocation (Spot me to the left of Sir RKJ’s right hand).

clipper 13-14 race, clipper 70, clipper crew trainingHelming a OneDLL CV20 in the sunshine during Level 3 training

Team Sean's Round the World Bar

The first of many outing for Team Sean’s Round the World Bar at team building

Parade of Sail Dress Rehearsal

Dress rehearsal for the Race Start parade of sail – and the first time all 12 Clipper 70’s were on the water together.DLD Boat NamingThe boat naming ceremony for Derry~Londonderry~Doire prior to race start

 

Standing in the Hall of Fame

The surveys have closed, the votes have been counted and Clipper have approved the choice. The official boat song for Team Sean, that will be blasted out from the loud speakers before each of the 15 race starts in various locations around the world, will be ‘Hall of Fame’ by The Script, an Irish band so maintaining the Irish connection that seems to be running through Team Sean. With all these Irish links, we will no doubt end up being the Swiss sponsored entry!

On a Level 3 training week at the end of May, some of Team Sean made a first attempt at recording our version of it in the galley of the new Clipper 70. There was even a guest appearance by our Skipper Sean. Don’t judge us too harshly. We had been at sea for 5 days at this point and had just come off a night watch!

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