Crew Blog

It is summer - honest!

24 June 2008

Today I am informed that we passed the longitude of Salvador, the furthest point west on our outward track, so we have finally completed a full 360 degrees around the world (though the official round the world won’t be completed until we cross our own track, probably somewhere in the Irish Sea). My question was, does that mean I can get off now? As there is no land in sight, nor will be for several days, this is hardly practical. And in any case, now that the wind has dropped and the sea state calmed, life on board Durban 2010 and Beyond has improved greatly. Today it was actually possible to go on deck without foulies and not get wet. And we reached a summery 9 degrees this afternoon! The South Africans on board need some convincing that this is not a normal British summer temperature, hopefully our arrival in Liverpool will involve temperatures in double figures and show them that Britain can be warm.

The improved living conditions, as usual, mean that we are running out of wind, and as the depression is moving east, the boats to the east of us (i.e. those in front) will run out of wind a day or two after us. So they will be able to build on their lead whilst we struggle with dying winds. However, we are becoming experts in bobbing about in light winds, having done several thousands of miles of it since leaving California. Our greatest hope is to reach our destination in one piece, as close to the intended arrival date as possible, and without motoring. We are flying our medium weight spinnaker, which seems to have suffered a moth attack whilst we weren’t looking, as it has developed a number of holes. When it is dropped our enthusiastic leg 7ers will be able to display their spinnaker repair talents and patch them. And as one of the thankfully underemployed sail repair team (when we damage sails we tend to do it in such a big way that there’s no repairing them) I shall supervise… possibly from my bunk!

Claire

To celebrate mid-way across the Atlantic and the round the worlders’ circumnavigation, Lucy opened her beauty salon for business on the foredeck. In the glorious sunshine, six punters (five girlies and James) took the plunge and stuck their head in the bucket, (ably and possibly a little over-enthusiastically) assisted by Steph in order to complete the hair washing process! This was followed by an entertaining round of charades - who can forget Mandy’s re-enactment of Gremlins, John doing the Karma Sutra (alone!) and Steph crawling around the saloon floor pretending to be a lamb in the hope the audience guessed the film Shawshank Redemption (lamb shank, obviously!)?

As we kept ourselves amused the wind died, moved around and then built to allow us to make some good headway on the fleet. Overnight we had several sail changes and successfully patched the four tears on the spinnaker allowing Claire an uninterrupted night’s sleep. Using the spinnaker as a headsail caused considerable chaffing on the starboard halyard; it was rechased by Michelle and Pete on the 3am-6am watch - another first for the leggers.

We are all hoping these speeds will continue with resultant gains on the balance of the fleet with each 6-hour run. We would all love a podium finish. We can certainly get used to travelling at 12knots +!

Enthusiastic leggers, Steph, Lucy & Michelle