Tall Ships Race re-visited

Hello Lynne,

I was on the Emerald Star yacht that was participating in the tall ships race. The yacht was only 44 foot long, which was not as big as the others were. The crew members and I were representing China in the race.  I started in Gosport on the 28th August, where the yacht was at and the other crew members. At Gosport, I met up with the captain and five other crew members. We introduced ourselves to each other and had a meal together at Weatherspoons.

On the next day, we set sail for Falmouth. It took us 3 days sailing to finally get to Falmouth. We stopped at Weymouth and Dartmouth on the way. During the first day of sailing, it was the worst day for us. It was raining all day and we all had seasickness. However, we managed to arrive at Weymouth late at night. 


We arrived in Falmouth on the 27th August. The race started on the 31st August, but between those days, the crew and I did all sorts of stuffs. Things like sports (soccer and tug of war), meeting the mayor, media photo shoots, looking at tall ships, beach swimming, crew parade, climbing the rigging, site-seeing, fireworks, tall ships parade and all sorts!

During the race, all the crew members took turns at the helm. We had to sail throughout the night until the finish line. This was very tiring as we had little sleep. In addition, while sailing at night, we could not see anything but the lights of other ships and buoys. We managed to cross the finish line on the morning of 1st September. 

After crossing the finished line, we moored into Gosport to relax, shower and sleep. On the next day, we carried on our sailing to Greenwich. During the leave, we moored into Eastbourne to refuel and sleep. We had an early morning start (I think around 3am start). Carrying on sailing, we passed Dover and sailing down the Thames. Since arriving in Greenwich late, we were too late to get into the locks so we had to park next to a rubbish bin.

We had an early morning start so we could get into the locks and dock in West India Docks. We finally docked on the 5th September. In the evening, we went into China Town to explore. At night, we went karaoke and had dinner together. 

Since arriving in London, myself and the crew did many things such as interviews, finding gifts for captain, boarding tall ships, watching fireworks, climbing the O2, parade of sail, watching the other ships firing the cannons and many exciting things.

After the parade of sailing, we dropped our camera man off and sailed back to Gosport. We had one last crew meal together before I left Gosport. The day I ended my journey was on the 11th September.

Stanley Chee