On Sailing Around the World

I have no idea since when I started watching sports event on the television when I used to just stick to Taiwanese variety shows or the drama series channel. But somehow when I was surfing the channels, I got hooked to this one showing sailboats in the open sea. It's not something like the Monsoon Cup in the East Coast organized yearly where sailors go out to sea to a certain distance and turn back.

Apparently, this race is not for the faint hearted. It lasts for 3 months. Sailors set sail from Portugal, going South in the Atlantic Ocean, passing through the equator, pass by Cape Hope of Africa and continued their journey to Australia, and enter the roughest sea on earth on the Southern hemisphere in the Pacific Ocean, before turning around Cape Horn of Argentina and head North back to Portugal again.

Things could just go so wrong in the journey. What seemed to be a strong sturdy sail boat could be just a fragile piece of floating leaf on the big ocean, readily collapse under the giant waves. The main pole could collapse anytime, not because of the wind, but the heat causing the expansion of the metal and so forth.

And the sail could broke!

I finished the show. It was like an update of where the sailors were at the moment when they had the filming done. But luckily the curiosity were satisfied in the next hour when they announced the winner.

7 teams set out to sea at the start of the race. Only 5 completed it.

Honestly, I was awed. It's definitely going into my to-do list in this life. Sailing in the open sea I mean.