Crew Blog

Going nowhere very quickly!

06 May 2008

Being back in the race is great; back fighting for every mile, eagerly anticipating every sched, knowing that friends and family have a reason to stop thinking about work for a few minutes to check on progress, sharing the joy and disappointments of plans that may or may not come to fruition. What isn’t so great is hearing the sound of flapping sails and the frustration of going nowhere very quickly for hours on end not knowing how the rest of the fleet is progressing. As our hourly log highlights runs of less than 1 mile, desperation develops.

As if our predicament isn’t frustrating enough, the announcement of the shortened finish line, raised the stakes. Yesterday, the strong afternoon sea breeze, on which our whole strategy relied, finally kicked in and stayed with us into the night. We had hope. We had a chance. I went to my bunk believing the “last minute surge by the BBB” phenomenon was back.

Waking up to the news that the fleet had superseded all our efforts was just shattering. One phrase keeps coming back to haunt me, “anyone can get a boat moving in a gale, but it takes a real sailor to make it move in light winds”. Obviously we still have plenty to learn!

Once the race is over, we can look forward to being distracted by the mass of turtles that swim by, huge sail fish jumping out of the water, gannets diving into the shoals of fish, crabs swimming past, whales breaching and dolphins enticing us to join them. Maybe life’s not so bad!

John Kimber