Crew Blog

Best laid plans

10 November 2007

We crossed the Greenwich Meridian Line yesterday, to a lot less ceremony than the equator crossing. We waved north to London, and thought of friends back home. It’s quite wintry weather here at the moment. Beautiful blue skies, but a chill in the air, which needs a good few layers of clothes to be comfortable. Similar to a pleasant winter’s day back home, but instead of pigeons waddling around the park, the large number of albatrosses that have been with the boat for a good few days now is entertaining us. Other than in the Monty Python sketch, I’d never seen them before. They look like very large and very fat seagulls that never seem to move their wings. A bit like one of those ceramic bird mobiles you’d find in a seaside shop. Definitely prefer them to pigeons.

The latest synoptic chart has just come in. The enormous South Atlantic High is back again. The route that the other boats were taking should have led them straight through the patch of light winds that sits almost permanently in this part of the world, bringing them practically to a standstill. Our long route round following the winds should have kept us moving nicely. Unfortunately for us, although we did manage to find the good winds south as planned, the high pressure system we were relying on decided to take a holiday just when needed most, so we’ve now just ended up having sailed quite a lot further than most of the fleet, to no advantage. ‘The best laid plans…’ and all that.

But all we can do now is keep racing and at least make sure the gap between us and the boats in front doesn’t get any bigger. So after shovelling down another Braithwaite Creation from the galley (fish and lentil stew with herb-crusted potato cakes!), it’s time for our watch to dig out all our warm clothes and go and spend some more quality time with the spinnaker.

One love,

Claire