Race 3 - Day 15
Crew Diary - Race 3 Day 15: Cape Town to Fremantle
15 November

Samantha Harper
Samantha Harper
Team Dare To Lead
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Day 15 on Dare to Lead and we are happy to be making fast progress towards Australia. On our navigation software, the entire fleet appears like a wave, converging towards Fremantle like sharks homing in on prey. We are eager to be in port and arrive in good standing, but with the rankings jumping wildly with each 6-hour 'Sched' (we went from 11th to 4th yesterday?!) it's still anyone's guess as how it will all play out.

As you've all read in the blogs to date, the first two weeks of this journey were a painful upwind beating (literally) with slow progress and never quite in the ideal direction. This made for some miserable days and nights on deck, but our watch (Starboard Watch) has been blessed by the presence of Sello, the Sapinda Rainbow Ambassador, for this leg. Sello is a fitness instructor back home in South Africa, with a golden voice and great attitude. His late-night singing, endless good humour, on-deck boxing classes and love for all things mayonnaise have kept us smiling throughout the dreary days. It's been great having him on board and he will be missed on the next leg!

One side effect of entering a remote island nation is that all fresh or not hermetically sealed food must be discarded. This means the 10 boxes of cake mix and several dozen eggs left on board need to be used up pronto. Cake mix + Mike T and myself on Mother Watch tomorrow = lots of cake for eating! There will be no shortage of takers – Dare to Lead definitely has a sweet tooth. We are leaving consumption of all mayonnaise-related products to Sello (aka 'Mayo'). There remains some debate as to whether or not Marmite can be considered an actual food item... the jury is still out on that one.

Not much new on deck this morning, just another day of cruising eastwards and hoping to keep the speed up. Below deck, Neil is busy putting a few patches on our Code 3 Spinnaker which got a few little nicks on its last take down. Today's mothers are Ant and Luke who are preparing some tuna wraps for lunch and making coffees for the on-deck Port watch but now it's bedtime for Starboard Watch who are on their 6-hour daytime rest period – so I'm off!

Thanks to all friends and family back home for supporting us on this crazy journey. Onwards to Fremantle!

Brought to you by Sam