Race 12 - Day 13
Crew Diary - New York to Derry-Londonderry
10 July

They say an army marches on it stomach, well Nasdaq sails on it's breakfasts. Great care is taken by every mother watch to ensure that at least two quality loaves are baked for the toast the next day. My personal preference is for peanut-butter with marmalade (the rest of the crew are not convinced, but don't knock it till you have tried it).

Today started much like all the others, in the middle of the night the major difference being that this morning the boat was flat! While this did make the dash from heads to fowlies more comfortable it also meant that we had not escaped the wind hole that over took us yesterday.

To escape the wind hole the team on port watch had had the stay sail up and down, wind-seeker trimmed in and out. This produced plenty of noise from the grinders over head to accompany the soft tones of Dad sleeping (thunderous snores that had the of going mothers checking who was responsible) in the bunk below. In-spite of these distractions I have been sleeping quite soundly and when woken for my watch at 23:30 was too sleepy to comprehend that the flat boat meant that we were still stuck. I arrived on watch to witness one last stay sail hoist and drop from the off going watch and realised that this would be a long watch.

Busy watches or those where you have to cling on to maintain position at your station are much more interesting than those that pass trying to make the boat move in no wind. Like our colleagues on the watch before we tried the stay up and down wind-seeker in and out before moving the boom out over the starboard side and all sitting under it. We still had no wind and by 03:15 we reached the point of dropping the main sail on the the boom. Thus at 04:00 we handed the deck back to port watch draped in a curtain of sail on a glassy sea.

Come 08:00, we breakfasted on the the last of the porridge oats and some top notch toast, starboard watch were back on deck. The main and stay sail have been re-hoisted but alas the boat speed is not back to a level that would heel the boat over and dropped off early into the watch.

Throughout our next six hour watch we struggle to get any meaningful wind to allow us to sail the boat. We trim the wind-seeker and mail sail all the while wistfully watching Sanya Serenity Coast crossing our horizon. Some of the watch distract themselves end to ending the halyards (re-running the lines so that the chafe point is at the winch rather than the top on the mast).

Hopefully port watch will have some wind this afternoon that will allow us to start searing back to our course and making better progress to Derry.

While I had been reflecting that this crossing seems to have passed very quickly this delay due to no wind is not the course extension I had hoped for! Tomorrow I will be on mother watch and hopefully with confirmed eta for Derry the two of us on mother watch will have free rain to cook up a treat for arrival.

Four loaves have been prepared for breakfast in anticipation of the porridge hole which could be far more damaging if we can't escape the wind hole.