Crew Blog

Northern strategy

12 April 2008

We have had another full day of down wind sailing in warm sunshine - such a welcome change from the dampness of the last few days.

Hull & Humber have organised a fund-raising Gurning competition.  For the uninitiated: Gurning dates from the medieval times when court jesters were allowed to make fun of the nobility by putting on a shire horse’s collar and pull faces to caricature the lords and ladies of the court.  All crew members must participate and submit photos when we reach Santa Cruz.

Several crew members were spotted sloping off to the heads (the only place with a mirror onboard) where we are sure they were practising their face pulling.  Of course, this has been completely denied and that they were simply taking advantage of the calmer conditions to wash their hair, shower and generally to preen themselves!

A small vertical tear in the 1.5 spinnaker was found this afternoon and we brought the sail down in record time.  While the 2.2 was raised the sail was quickly repaired and wrapped ready for use.

By the end of the day we were delighted to see that we were in 3rd place, having overtaken Glasgow: Scotland with style Clipper, and we feel we are now particularly well placed to benefit from the weather systems.  Our northern strategy is working well for us currently.  We are just over 900 miles to the finish and it will be a very intense race to the finish.

Kate and Susan