Babs heads off round the world!

Babs on Gold Coast Australia

Xena crew, family and friends, will know the lovely Babs Yendell: she crewed with us on last year's King's Cup, and now she's heading off in the Clipper Round the World Clipper race starting in Southampton UK this coming Saturday.

Check out her blog and cheer on Gold Coast Australia!

Email from Babs:

Hi there,

Firstly my apologies for this mass email, but  I wanted to let as many of you know about the amazing adventure I’m soon to undertake.

On the 12th February 2010 I signed up to take part in the Clipper Round the World Yacht Race, an 8 leg  40,000 mile yacht race. I’d originally planned to sign up for just the one of the legs, but to those of you who know me well I can be rather indecisive and as I couldn’t decide which of the 8 legs to do, the simplest option was to do the whole 40,000 mile circumnavigation !

So on July 31st I shall set off from Southampton in the UK on a circumnavigation of the globe. It will take 11 months to complete and during this we’ll cross the Atlantic Ocean, the South Atlantic, the Southern Ocean, the Java and South China Seas plus the mighty Pacific. We’ll go around two of the three great capes – Cape of Good Hope and Cape Leeuwin and we’ll dip down into the roaring 40’s on our way to New Zealand.
In the race there are going to be 10 identical 68 foot stripped down racing yachts with 18 crew on board, each boat will be representing a country or a region of a country.

I’ve set up a website here and I’ll be trying to post updates from the various ports, the posts with photos and video will document my journey from a novice sailor to a seasoned circumnavigator on board the yacht Gold Coast Australia. I hope that you will come with me on this incredible journey around the world. 

You can also view the race on the official website here. it has a link to the race viewer which is updated every 3 hours and gives near real-time positions of the boats as they race around the globe.   

Seems a funny thing to say but have a good year and I’ll see you when I get back, 22nd July 2012 Ocean Village Southampton 40 000 miles later !

Bye for now
Babs

Fun Foto of the day....

What, you call that fully loaded??  There's at least an inch of freeboard!....

And this is the boyz and girrls boarding....

Richard, TC, Cess, Iris, Grant, Cam, Cookie, Digger, Mike, Stevo

PS: Catherine has sent out link to all crew with her Picasa album. For the record, it's here.

Mirs Bay race and return race

Dapeng Fortress in Dapeng town, Shenzhen district. More info here.

These two races are part of Hebe Haven's typhoon series.  They're on August 6th (up) and 7th (back).  Interested please mail me peter@forsythe.hk

For update on racing sked see Xena site.  Note that we are not doing the China Coast or Vietnam, though we're still committed to doing King's Cup and also the Boracay in February.

Some random notes of interest for Mirs Bay:

In Chinese it's Da Peng Wan (大鵬灣), which literally means "big beautiful bird bay" (but it's not a "plover" as in the Cove, nor a "starling" as in the Inlet).  Whereas Mirs appears to mean nothing: though I believe it relates to a colonial by the name of Mir, and was early on apostrophe'd as in "Mir's" bay.  Look up Mirs now and you get Michigan Information & Research Service, Manx Industrial Relations Service, Melbourne International Research Scholarship and -- my favourite -- the Metrology Institute of the Republic of Slovenia.


Mirs Bay's Dapeng peninsula is home to Dapeng village and the Dapeng fort, piccie above.  It was a fortress used against pirates during the Ming dynasty.


Update, 17 July: Rick's away o/s and others tied up in boats doing the whole Typhoon series, so we'll skip this as race, though we may still cruise up.  Stay in touch, if interested.  P.