Crew Blog

Our last blog

04 July 2008

There’s been a lot of last things recently; this final leg seems to have been going on forever and yet the last 10 months have gone scarily quickly. The sun finally came out today to the extent of some people getting down to shirtsleeves and/or shorts. We were beginning to feel that all the hanging around in the Atlantic fog meant we had missed the British summer completely but the first 24 hours of Race 14 has been perfect, downwind sailing of the sort we haven’t seen for months in this allegedly downwind race.

There’s a real end-of-term, slightly demob-happy feel across the fleet, we’ve never had such close racing or so much to play for- every time I come on watch there’s a different order and with the wind just picking up again this afternoon we’ve gone from possibly having to try and anchor in 84m of water to dropping the spinny, hoisting the windseeker, dropping the stay, hoisting the stay, dropping the windy, hoisting the Yankee 1 and throwing in a few tacks…You get the picture, it won’t be over till it’s over.

We feel slightly cheated on Hull & Humber in that all the ‘gates’ on this race mean that there’s very little choice in terms of course or tactics, which removes one of our strengths. However, the extended course means that we’ve now got extra time to try and get four places in front of New York whilst sailing around at the mouth of the Mersey. With the number of boats around us both that is still very possible. All we can do is give it our best shot and see what happens; as we know all too well from the Race 11 result, a few points lead can all too easily be turned around completely in one race.

I have very mixed emotions- sadness that the most amazing thing I have ever been part of is nearly over but also now really wanting to get on with the rest of my life. It will be fascinating to see who goes where and does what after this from this new family of something like 400 crew involved in the 2007-08 race. I can’t imagine that anyone could just slot back into their previous life but we are all very different people.

All of us on Hull & Humber have been astonished by the level of interest and support from the whole region as well as our personal contacts. It may be quite some time after we finish before the magnitude of what we have done really sinks in. While I can, I’d like to say a very heartfelt thank you from all the Hull & Humber crew for all the blogs, emails, messages of support and the people who came to wish us well at stopovers and the start or finish. You won’t get rid of us that easily, some of us will certainly be there to wave off the Big Orange Boat from Hull and Humber in September 2009. 

Fiona