Crew Blog

Glad To Be Back Onboard

23 June 2008

So it’s been about five months since I last wrote a blog onboard Hull & Humber, that was on leg 3 heading across from Durban To Fremantle in Western Australia, in which leg an injury recurred, which didn’t allow me to continue with the rest of the race, but luckily that is now all behind and I managed to get on for the last leg in Jamaica.

Now we are on the final stretch heading across the Atlantic, it’s come a long way and things have changed since I was last onboard some small some big, but all for the better. One of the biggest things that I have found to have changed is how the racing has become so close between the fleet. We currently have Jamaica to the port of us, Qingdao and New York just ahead of us, all of which we can see which is very close after 7 days of racing. I think match racing this close in such a long race is great, you are constantly trying to find that thing that the other yachts don’t have, usually called speed but the big thing is who is going to find it first, and who can hold it for the longest. That’s where tweaking small things, and seeing if things work or don’t work, which makes it probably one of the best ways to learn more about sailing as you are constantly pushing the yacht, and as my dad always says “Speed is your secret weapon” which in fact it pretty much is, if we have speed and the other yachts don’t know about it then we are making or pulling away from the rest of the fleet with very little warning, to both us and the rest of the fleet.

Sam Willis