Race 4 - Day 9
Crew Diary - Race 4 Day 9: Fremantle to Sydney
11 December

Land Ho!

Excitement has been building since last night when through the rain and clouds we could see the glimmer of lights from Tasmania, upon waking this morning to daylight we are able to see the rolling hills and islands to our port side as we traverse north towards Sydney. Our only problem at present is the lack of a good breeze to hurry us along, that and pesky PSP Logistics has crept up inside of us to knock us back down a place.

I am picking up on a reoccurring theme of the wind dropping on us as we near our destination the only difference this time is that it seems to have created a slight cabin fever effect in a few crew. Bursts of laughter have been breaking out both below decks and above with seemingly no reasoning behind. A few crew have also taken a more relaxed approach to duties, just this morning it took 3 crew members nearly 3 hours to roll and pack a spinnaker. Their first excuse was they couldn't possibly interrupt Port Watch in their breakfast, their second was that they needed a mandatory break as they had been working for what they called 'hours' and their final excuse was that they had been learning a new way to pack the spinnaker away and that took time to 'process'. Naturally no one was buying into their excuses, especially when you could see them below tucking into hot drinks and snacks while having a pleasant chat with Skipper, luckily there was not much to do on deck. Cheekiness seems to be spreading like wildfire amongst the crew.

This morning we attempted to fly our spinnaker, after a successful and swift hoist our plans were scuppered when our primary winch that was holding our sheet decided to no longer work, later investigations revealed that the grub pin attaching the shaft to hub of the winch had come lose, this meant that we were unable to adjust our spinnaker and as such had to quickly drop after it had become wrapped but thankfully we were damage free for a change!

All crew are very much looking forward to warmer weather, especially Shona who has taken to wrapping herself entirely from head to toe each time she climbs into her bunk to sleep, not a single bit of skin can be see, how she is able to breath beneath hat, multiple buffs, an eye-mask, base layers, fleece and an ocean sleeping bag is beyond me!

We are definitely getting into the Christmas spirit onboard. Shona's mum made us a beautiful pocket advent calendar and every so often the Christmas fairy pays us a visit to leave us sweets in the pockets according to our muster number. We've also been learning about different traditions that we each have when it comes to Christmas although Ernst was unwilling to fill our shoes with sweets – he claims we were too late for Santa Claus, I think oranges should be appearing in his shoes next year!

Garmin has also made an appearance on our AIS, catching us up from behind, we shall have to pull back our focus in order to keep them at bay. We can but hope that the boats currently in stealth mode have been caught in the light winds which would give us a chance to catch them up before the Scoring Gate.