Race 3 - Day 16
Crew Diary - Race 3 Day 16: Cape Town to Fremantle
16 November

Nov 16 Starboard Watch (Andy, Alex, Dave, Rick, Phil, Mark, John, & Simon) Blog

Today's blog will feature:

First off happy birthday to our starboard star Mark. He's been a fantastic on the helm and just knocked out a good birthday session with the spinnaker. Mark 3 – 0 Westerly... for now.

Last night, we came on deck singing the Black Eyed Peas' song ''I Got A Feeling'' hoping to pump ourselves up for a long night of flying the spinnaker sail.

Keeping a kite flying at night

Gives us quite a fright.

Especially if it's not that bright

The angles are tight

and we struggle with the upwind fight.

(To the echoes of ''Bear the f*** away'' (Simon))

Wave awareness week is the brainchild of Phil and Andy. Hoping to prevent further upwind injuries they have devised a system to warn the cockpit when incoming waves are near. The co-helms person will perform a certain signal to let cockpit members know about the size and number of the waves. This ingenious scale is known as the ''Phand'' wave scale.

The signs indicate:

I'm sure you can figure out what the signs are.

Finally we have realized that some of the RTWers are morphing into our skipper Rob and are slowly picking up our skipper's habits. The sight of a loose sail tie makes the foredeck crew absolutely livid. Just now, Andy was hanging off the pulpit trying to fish out a broken broom handle that was tied to the bowsprit. His plan was to use it as a new toilet paper roller. Rob's waste-not want-not mentality has really taken hold of him. Meanwhile Alex cannot go past the waste bin without wanting to compact the rubbish, and will fill any empty containers with stuffable materials.