82. Race 8 and 9 Results

There was no Race 8, it was combined with Race 7, but I don’t want anyone (including me in months to come) thinking I’ve missed something out. There are some random pictures from Subic Bay here. The header is Romeo calling Juliet, early one morning. I was too asleep to get the zoom to work so JD is tiny! The next few Posts will be rather limited I suspect, make the most of seeing these exotic shots.

Race 9 was Subic Bay to Subic Bay Number 2. As well as the main race, there were three Ocean Sprints along the triangular course with each boat being allowed to enter two of the three. There were no Scoring Gates and no Stealth mode. As you may have read, the race was stopped early due to circumstances beyond anyone’s control. In addition, there was no prize giving or party (except on the boats stranded behind the gate during quarantine). Is it coincidence that this was also the only race where there was not a Dawson on the podium?

The last few Ocean Sprints have been announced during the prize giving ceremony. It has been pointed out by an eagle-eyed reader that I transposed the North and South Ocean Sprints from the last race (Race 7/8). The results stand but Qingdao and WTC entered the South and the rest of the fleet the North Sprint. This is what happens when your husband comes home unexpectedly and actually reads something you wrote. In addition, I have been informed that I need to give better links to my previous Posts when I refer back. As I’m under house arrest for a few weeks or months I might find time to do this. If you get update emails you can ignore them, this is all I’m doing (and possibly correcting typos).

This time, for Race 9, the Ocean Sprint results went out on the Clipper website after we had all flown home. Assuming I don’t get these muddled, the results were as follows. Ocean Sprint 1 was entered by eight boats, namely Seattle, Punta del Este (PdE), Ha Long Bay (HLB), Dare to Lead (DTL), Sanya, Qingdao, Unicef and Zhuhai. The winners were PdE three points for being the fastest, DTL two and Qingdao one.

Ocean Sprint 2 was entered by seven boats: Imagine Your Korea (IYK), GoToBermuda (GTB), Seattle, WTC Logistics, HLB, DTL and Zhuhai. The winners were HLB (three points), GTB (two points) and Seattle (one point).

You should be able to work out who entered Ocean Sprint 3 from the names above but I’ll save you the brain work, we all have enough to ponder these days (where will I find the next toilet roll seeming to be the main issue of the day). Seven entries: IYK, GTB. WTC, PdE, Sanya, Qingdao and Unicef. Winners: IYK three points, Qingdao two points and PdE one point.

Adding all of these up we have seven boats gaining bonus points: PdE four, HLB, IYK and Qingdao three each, GTB and DTL two each and Seattle one point.

Now to the overall race: HLB were first over the line and scored eleven points, PdE second with ten, Sanya third with nine, Seattle fourth with eight, Unicef fifth with seven, Zhuhai sixth with six, WTC seventh with five, GTB eighth with four, DTL ninth with three, Qingdao tenth with two and IYK eleventh with one. Interestingly, for the last two races, the last over the line was first the time before. Relaxing too much? Also of interest was Qingdao, who not only missed a Mark and had to go back (see Post 80 dated 16th March 2020), but also misread the new finish line and so cruised over the correct one in the penultimate position.

To the final results for this year. There is a possibility of penalty points being issued for Legs 5 and 6 but what we know is that Qingdao are still at the top of the table with 102 points, HLB second with 91, PdE third with 74, Sanya fourth with 65, Unicef still fifth with 58, then IYK with 54, WTC and DTL both with 47, Zhuhai with 40, GTB with 39 and Seattle with 37.

Next time: who knows? Nothing to do with boats I think but I do need to keep myself occupied. Maybe I’ll start spouting controversial opinions? Sharing my knitting patterns? Become an entertainment critic? Or just carry on as normal.