Crew Blog

Racing onwards

15 March 2008

The race might officially be over but we’re still sailing Nova Scotia as fast as possible towards Oahu. Not that I’m wishing our time away on the water, I love it out here, but for me racing is a major source of motivation. When you’re woken at 2.30 am and you know its wet and cold outside you need something to get you out of your sleeping bag! The thought of taking a few miles off the boat in front is enough to get me springing into action. However sometimes it’s the sheer adrenalin rush of the boat cutting through the waves and the wind howling through the rigging that will get us racing up on deck to get on the helm first.

We had a good night’s sailing, with speeds of 10 to 11 knots - quite impressive with reduced canvas. As ever the wind is being fickle but we’re still moving at 7 to 8 knots, the sun’s shining, the weather is getting warmer by the day and a whale followed us for about two hours this morning; what more could we want? We’re also using this time as a valuable opportunity to teach the new crew members different evolutions, and to give them extra time on the wheel, which can only benefit us for the next race.

We’ve also finally finished sewing the 1.5 spinnaker - a huge relief to us all after 36 hours of pretty much constant sewing! We still have some taping to do, as well as a bit more machine sewing once we get to Oahu, but we’ve saved ourselves hours of work in port (all the more time to go to the beach and explore the bars) and showed what a bit of teamwork can achieve - never a bad thing for crew morale!

Mel