"I'll hae nae hauf-way hoose but aye be whaur extremes meet..." Hugh McDiarmid

Saturday 27 April 2013

we have a start date!

clipper have released 1st september as the start date for our race! this is a bit later than I think we were all expecting (or hoping for) but now we know :)

we don't have a home port yet though. there is a lot of speculation in the fb group, with london (greenwich) and weymouth the two favourites. it'll be interesting to see how close the guessing is! personally my wish of somewhere in scotland or ireland has been dashed as the last newsletter said 'somewhere in the south of england'...dammit!

crew allocation is now only two weeks away!!!!! and in five weeks I'll be heading back to scotland!!!! it looks like I'll have to find some work for a bit as the race start is later than I thought, but it'll be nice to be working in the UK again. catch up with some mates and all that.

we have had really quite british weather here for the last week. we had a thunderstorm that woke me up (very unusual) and scared the life out of the wee feral cat we've been looking after - so she got to bunk in with me for the night. we've had rain that's caused flooding all over muscat as well. the wadis are really full at the moment.

work is getting busy, building up to the last bit of the season. we have ballet folklorico de mexico in this week and they have some fairly terrifying massive headpieces in the show...

claire realises this is the second friday in a row she's worked...

I think this one looks like the wee girl from the ring films. anyone else? ;)

nothing much else has been happening really, hence why there was no post last week...

Thursday 11 April 2013

clipper skippers!


here they are - the 12 skippers for this years clipper round the world yacht race! which one will my team and me get? four weeks on saturday we find out :D

there is one lady skipper this year which is cool. a mix of nationalities too, with two aussies, a canadian, a dutchman and an irishman as well as the seven brits.

it's all getting very real now, with announcements about sponsorship and ports expected before crew allocation. that will be the big one for us, and the blog post will be done on the sunday that week I think so I can include all the information I have!

I was in the paper here in muscat again yesterday. the lovely kate from Y magazine has done a brilliant two page spread with loads of photos - thanks clipper PR folk! the main photo shows me and my fellow level 1 trainee lisa with matt, who was our training mate, and is now one of the skippers - second from the right above. how brilliant! if you've read my post about level 1 you'll know what a great time we had and how patient matt was :)

we had our last concert shell performance of this season at the opera house, so we've done the transformation for the last time. we have two really big operas coming in and hopefully that will keep my mind off waiting for crew allocation.

anyway, I am off to dubai for the weekend - our weekend here in oman is changing to friday and saturday to bring us in line with the emirates. normally it is thursday and friday, but our banks have been friday and saturday for a while now. this makes a whole lot of stuff easier for us. the change happens on the 1st of may, so in three months I'll have three different weekends! but that's fine, because on the race we won't really have weekends...

it's nearly may!!!

Saturday 6 April 2013

tick-tock

I'm very aware at the moment that I am counting down. to crew allocation. to finishing up work here in oman and getting back to scotland, albeit briefly. to my level 2. to my level 3. to the start of the race.

I need to be careful not to wish this bit of my life away. I have seven weeks left now. seven weeks to spend quality time with the good friends I've made here in muscat over the past two years. seven weeks to sell my car, finish the building manual and tie up any loose ends here before I fly back to glasgow.

very sad news this week about Iain Banks, one of my favourite authors. my favourite scottish author. or as someone on twitter put - 'two of scotland's greatest authors' - very apt. going to have to download as many of his books as possible onto my kindle for the race :)

we had our joining instructions for the crew allocation day through yesterday. I clicked 'accept' so I'm all set. I've had my travelodge and my flights booked for a couple of months now - I am only getting 3 days in the UK for this one. it's going to be a tightly packed day, and I'll have to get my photo taken at least once. torture :S

we're all currently waiting to find out who our 12 skippers are. we know they've been selected and the facebook group is digging for information to find out. nothing is forthcoming though, so I suppose we'll just have to wait to find out. hopefully next week. there's that clock again...