Crew Blog

2.153 nautical miles to go

17 April 2008

All day today we’ve been flying along, averaging about 10.5 knots. As we’ve come closer and closer to the finish, our ETA has been steadily improving. The more optimistic predictions in the boat sweepstake have looked like having the best chance of winning. Most people had plumped for Thursday morning, but it has been looking like Wednesday night (tonight) for a day or so now. Marvellous!

We debated whether or not to bother making dinner this evening, hoping that we’d be arriving in the early evening and could substitute a meal of boat food for, well anything really. In the end we decided that pizzas would be a useful snack, and we may even get to drink our ‘shore beers’ with them.

‘Everyone on deck’ called the skipper, some time ago now, trying to get ready for dropping the sails on the finish line, which was fast approaching. Then the wind died.

We are now 2.148nm away from the finish line. The boat speed is currently 0.0 knots, but luckily there is a tiny bit of current in our favour. What wind there is – about 2 knots – is coming directly from the finish line, which means we have to tack, almost doubling the distance to sail.

The ‘follow me’ boat, who will be leading us into the harbour if and when we finally cross the finish line, has just given up on us and gone back to the yacht club. They told us to hurry up as there are beers and margaritas waiting for us in the bar. ‘You should have got here two hours ago’, they said, cheerily, ‘there was plenty of wind then’.

We’ve just been called up on deck to set up the anchor, as we started going backwards for a little while. The computer which had calculated about two hours more to go, suddenly suggested an ETA of thirty-six hours time. There’s been a short reprieve as we managed to harness the tiny bit of breeze again.

We can see the shore. Not surprising really as it’s only half a mile away. We did have a fairly comfortable lead over Liverpool 08, of about 40 miles, but that must be pretty much gone by now. We really weren’t expecting to be looking over our shoulders for them at this late stage.

1.333nm to go. I reckon we should swim it.