Crew Blog

Dull it ain’t

06 March 2008

It’s been a very interesting 24 hours on Uniquely Singapore and while you may think that in sailing over 4000 miles life gets a bit dull, I can assure you that things are constantly happening to challenge you and keep you on your toes. This time yesterday we were sailing along under heavy weight spinnaker when we spotted Liverpool 08 on our starboard beam with their spinnaker up. Over the course of the next 10 hours they slowly went behind us as their course was slightly more northerly than ours. We were then told of westernaustralia2011.com’s dismasting, which shocked us all. We’re glad that nobody was hurt, but all on Uniquely Singapore are thinking of them because this will be a massive blow to their race.

At about 3.30am we had our own small incident when the shackle holding the guy to our spinnaker sheet sheared in a gust of wind. The spinnaker was released as if we were going to drop it but without us being ready. As many people as possible rushed out of their bunks, in various states of attire, to help gather it in. These things always seem to happen at about 3.30am. I call it the witching hour.

We then heard that we were third, we seemed to have had stronger winds to the south of the fleet, however in the spinnaker chaos Liverpool 08, who had progressed to our port quarter had managed to move past us.

We’re now sailing along with a poled-out headsail in 30 knots of breeze and perhaps some of us are hoping for a little dullness in the next 24 hours.

Graham McMillan

[pic: Baz eyeing an squall about to overtake us]