Race start
With an international team, there hasn't been a moment where everyone has been in the same place. In total we’re a 50 people crew of which 7 are going around the world. The others, like me, have cherrypicked 1 upto 5 legs out of 8 to take part in. I’m used to working at a distributed company and also now, the combination of in-person trainings, team building, combined with many online gatherings on Zoom, a Whatsapp community for many different aspects of the race make for a place of inclusion. It’s inevitable that some people on the team spend more time contributing than others, but we’re organized into functional teams and Skipper Oli & AQP Otto are working non-stop on the preparations for our team.
In August there are two preparation weeks and as much as I would have liked to help and put the finishing touches on the freshly rigged CV27. It is a period with plenty of other commitments. Luckily there is time for a weekend trip out in Zeeland together with Kate and we enjoyed some island hopping on our beloved Dehler, called the Yukon.
On the 22nd of August the announcement of our boat partner was made. We are the last team to have a partner announced and thanks to the generous charity supporter gifting our boat to the good cause of Great Ormond Street Hospital, we can now sail with a wrapped CV27 and race while raising awareness for GOSH!
And then it’s race start, August 31st. Again a good reason to travel to Portsmouth, UK and wave of the team, but instead there was another celebration which had been in the planning for a while. This year I reached the age of 40, like many of my friends, but also my parents reached the milestone age of 70. We decided to celebrate together and make Race Start day also a nice end of the summer holidays picnic in our garden. Family and friends joined us for freshly baked desem bread, outdoor games and we nearly escaped a couple of minutes of rain. It is a perfect day to share a bit more about the adventure I’m taking on with Clipper and ask people to contribute to the causes under my Sponsor page.
