Crew Allocation!
Steve and I spent the weekend in Gosport just for Crew Allocation. I was so happy he was able to join me and begin to get an idea about this crazy Clipper world I’ve immersed myself in.
Friday night we had a great dinner with my Level 1 peeps and on Saturday it was off to Guild Hall for Crew Allocation.
Crew allocation has the same feel as the NFL draft. All 11 skippers line up on stage and read off the names of the people on their teams. Clipper balances each team based on gender, sailing experience, age and the number of circumnavigators vs. people doing individual legs.
I was allocated to team Visit Sanya, China with Skipper, Seumas Kellock (a Scotsman) and Additional Qualified Person (i.e. First Mate), Jorge Infante Llorca (a Spaniard, and more importantly, a Barca fan). I was concerned I wouldn’t be able to understand Seumas, but luckily his accent isn’t as strong as I feared (or to quote Steve, “he doesn’t have marbles in his mouth”). My friend Tom Scarpa from Level 1 is also on Sanya!
Sanya is tropical island in southern China and one of the stops on the Clipper race. This is Sanya’s second year sponsoring a team, and last year, they won! Sanya is a tropical paradise with relaxed visa requirements and subsidized (i.e. affordable) hotel and airfare costs.
China is sponsoring three boats in this year’s race. Each boat has “ambassadors” from China on board for each of the legs. Sanya is fortunate to have our own dedicated media person who is doing the full circumnavigation. In addition two Sanya ambassadors will be joining for each leg. The other Chinese sponsored boats are Zhuhai (first year) and Qingdao (sponsor since 2005).
Can you find me? About 1/2 up and 3/4 to the right.
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