Qingdao harbor - tugs, warships, and lifeboat racing

Tugster likes to get up close and watch the tugs push freighters around. Here's a shot of a warship getting pushed around - in Qingdao, China. There's some sort of friendly gathering of warships there for a multinational naval parade.

Highlights include a lifeboat (吊船) race, and a stubby Chinese nuclear submarine.

Images: China Daily

Volvo:Qingdao to Rio 6 days out, 30 to go

The fleet (5 of 8 remain) is a few hundred miles north of the Coral Sea angling toward Cape Horn, with an average speed of 16 - 19 knots with 2o knots of wind and six foot swells. Highway speed. Next stop Rio. DTF 9,842 nm for Ericsson 4, the leader.

Here's the data page

And here's the home page.

Volvo Race: Luzon Strait to Hell

There are five Volvo 70's in Qingdao - soon to be six, one with a cracked hull in Taiwan and another given up the effort in the Philipines.

2,500 hundred miles - much of it hell.  At the Luzon Strait a 50 kt storm opposed tide, pushing up 14 meter seas, a steep, short chop.  Boats anchored, took refuge in harbors and suspended sailing but not racing.

Ken Read of North Sails, skipper of PUMA describes their comeback to take second, though he and boat suffered nasty injury - a finger crushed in a winch and a boom broken in two.  Here's his report from the Chinese city.

Video of boatbreaking conditions here. 

And Green Dragon (Irish/Chinese collaboration) video: Battling the Conditions

Today's report of the condition of the fleet is here.

Nextstop: Brazil.  40 days.  Around the Horn.  Makes one wonder if they aren't taking unjustified risks in their Volvos.