The last week has been full of work. We all started out by collecting our sails. Once we had the sails, we laid them out in a park to label them and mark various positions, which will on one hand make it easier to properly attach the sail when we want to hoist it. On the other hand, we put marks that basically serve as a coordinate system. Should we notice any damage on those sail we can not the position of the damage relative to those labels and then when we take down the sail, it should be much easier to find and repair this part. Finally, all sails were folded such that we are ready to hoist them, when we need them.

On Wednesday our boat was taken out of the water. We should finally get our team sponsor announcement and the boat should get it’s branding. It was interesting to see the boat lifted out of the water. This allowed for a proper inspection of the part that is normally under water. In the meantime we were still allowed to work on the boat. Eagerly awaiting the announcement, we started inventorying our tools and spare parts. In parallel, our bosun team started servicing all the winches such that they are in pristine condition when we start our journey.

On Friday morning we finally got the announcement, that we had all been waiting for, since we had learnt that our boat sponsor was decided. We gathered on board and our Skipper Lou told us, that we would be representing the South Korean host port Tongyeong, located in the Gyeongnam province in the very south of the Korean peninsula. While Korea has not yet been part of major international sailing events, they are looking to develop as a centre for offshore sailing. Thus, the city is highly anticipating this team partnership and will do their best in hosting us and the other boats in spring next year. To find out more, please see the official announcement: https://www.clipperroundtheworld.com/news-and-events/article/host-to-contender-introducing-team-tongyeong

While we made good progress over the last week in getting our boat ready for race start, there are still a couple of very important tasks to do. While the branding of the boat will hopefully be finalised on Monday so that we can be put back into the water by Monday evening, we will also receive all our lines and the majority of the food deliveries on Monday. Besides that, there are still a lot of smaller tasks to complete in order to be ready for the race start on 31^st August.