La Conner grad's adventure on the high seas

Karen Van Wieringen Ballard, a self-described adventure junkie, stepped away from her desk job to compete in a sailboat race from Qingdao, China to San Francisco.

She is a 1981 La Conner High School graduate and is the daughter of Nancy Van Wieringen, who also graduated from the local schools.

The Clipper Round the World Yacht Race begins and ends in South Hampton, England and is divided into several different legs.

Karen jumped onboard with a crew of 16 on March 16 in Qingdao, China and docked in San Francisco 26 days later. They placed fourth out of 11 competing boats, a crossing of over 5,800 nautical miles — that equates to more than 6,500 land miles — on that leg of the race. The boat she was on, the OneDLL is in second place overall so far.

Except for “boot camp” training in the English Channel nine months before she was to start her journey out of China, Karen had never sailed before.

Out of 350 applicants, only 30 people were chosen to go to the sailing boot camp. Out of that 30, only 17 were chosen for the sixth leg of the journey out of Qingdao.

During her training, Karen learned “how to hoist sails, points of sail, how to change and when to change sails according to wind strength, tie knots, helming — how everything works together on a 70-foot boat. It’s about teamwork and communication,” she said.

“I was in a constant state of confusion,” she said. “So many lines that do different things… We didn’t have any rough seas during training until the last level when the wind was 50 knots and the seas were very choppy. Three-quarters of the people got seasick. But I felt ready at the end of training.” She had yet to experience the heavy seas of the Pacific.

Her training ended in June of 2013 — leaving a long nine months before she set foot on a boat again and met her crewmates for the first time.

Last month, the sailboat OneDLL, pulled away from the dock to the sounds of traditional Chinese drumming, and headed across the blue Pacific to San Francisco.

Once at sea, watches were six hours during the day and four hours at night — never enough time to adjust to the sleep schedule.

The OneDLL was short handed with a crew of only 16 — other boats carried 18 to 20. Additionally, four members of Karen’s crew were injured, forcing her and other members to take up the slack, further eroding her sleep time while on a rocking, banging, noisy boat. With plenty of activity onboard, she learned to get her rest in short naps.

Seas were calm when the OneDLL left Qingdao Harbor. A few days later, Karen was jolted awake from a deep sleep. She pulled on clothes that were already wet and stepped out of the cabin. She was greeted with the dark night as the boat heeled over to the water line, and 35-foot seas crashed over from the other side.

Karen said she was continually doused and always wore a safety harness, as it is not uncommon for people to go overboard if they are not harnessed.

If there was a problem on deck — say the wind wrapped the spinnaker around the shrouds and needed changing – she would be woken to help change it. One night it took three hours and six crewmen to get the torn spinnaker down, with wave after wave crashing over their heads.

Then the torn sail needed repair, had to be laid out, folded in a particular way and tied with wool string. Then another sail had to be hoisted — all in 50-knot winds, in the dark and with waves crashing over them. Times like that made her question what she had signed up for. But with calm seas on the tails of every storm, she forgot her doubts.

Crewmembers were cross-trained on all duties including cooking, helming and hoisting sails. Prior to leaving, she had the experience of shopping in China for food provisions that needed to last the crew for over 30 days. Even buying a box of cake mix was challenging, as the instructions were in Chinese.

All competing boats, including the OneDLL, had crews from many different cultures — British, American, Italian, Mexican, Dutch and Chinese. The only requirement was that everyone spoke English. The challenge, and the goal, was to have several different cultures perform a challenging task through communication and teamwork.

And that is the reason Karen decided to go on this adventure. The company she works for, DLL, an international financial institution, works with many different cultures. The Clipper race was chosen as a “metaphor to bring members of many different cultures together working on the same goal.”

Competing boats were from corporations as diverse as Garmin GPS and Invest Africa.

There are two more legs of the race — which will take the competitors through the Panama Canal, finally docking in England.

Missing her husband and family was one of the most difficult things Karen faced. “But this experience has prompted an interest for both me and my husband,” she said. “We will take more courses and be able to rent a 30- or 40-foot boat and explore off the coast of New Jersey or the Caribbean or home in La Conner,” she said.

“But I have no desire for ocean crossings,” she said. “I want opportunity to come into port when weather is getting bad.”

Karen, who is now 50, lives in New Jersey and works at DLL as a credit manager.

“It’s okay to try things you are a little afraid of, but that shouldn’t hold you back,” she said. “I had in mind it was going to be a really tough experience, and it was, but not as tough as I thought it would be. There were times when it was calm, peaceful and enjoyable — in-between storms, wet and stress.”

You can read Karen’s blog about her adventure at http://www.one-dll.com