Race 5 - Day 2
Crew Diary - Race 5 Day 2: Sydney to Hobart
28 December

At every port since we left Gosport in August, people have asked, “What part of the race have you enjoyed the most so far?” My answer today is, “The Sydney-Hobart Race!”

It's a definite winner compared with the epic long, hot voyage of Leg 1, the soggy adventures of Leg 2, and the grey, cold, upwind bash of Leg 3. The Leg 4 race from Fremantle to Sydney was a candidate for “enjoyable”, until seasickness, spinnaker troubles, wind holes, and a serious injury to a crewmember dropped the Fun Rating down to less than 3 out of 10.

For this race we have a great crew, our excellent Mate Piers Dudin (veteran of too many Clipper adventures to list), and our Skipper Rob has a new racing haircut. The race start was a fantastic experience, with hundreds of thousands of spectators on land and sea, a whole spectator fleet, and helicopters everywhere. Sailing down the coast the first night, surrounded by other vessels, was just great. The weather so far has been perfect, with wind mostly from the right direction and at about the right speed. The helming has been fun, with some good wave surfing and no huge waves or confused seas. The skies have been clear enough to use stars as markers, with Orion and the Southern Cross over us last night. Our sails are all still intact (except for our already-wounded medium-weight spinnaker, which is living in the sail locker, in two large and separate pieces, awaiting the healing touch of the sail repair team). We have Christmas dinner leftovers plus fresh food. And we have a beautiful Christmas cake, thanks to Lorna Mackie of Adelaide, whose husband Campbell was a RTW crew member on Garmin in the 15-16 race.

After more than 15,000 miles, the boat needed a tuneup in Sydney. Thanks as always to the superb Clipper maintenance team! I'm personally really grateful to our leggers and other RTW crew for working extra hard, so that I could take a holiday in Sydney. Special thanks to Phil Wilkinson's dad Brian for his boundless energy, to Kate Switajewski and her family for their hospitality and help, to Graham Coutts for his generosity, to Gerry and Maureen Egan (more mango chutney! hooray!) and to everyone else who helped out so we could finish a long list of repairs and improvements. We are very grateful to our families and supporters who travelled to Sydney so we could enjoy the break together.

Finally, we have a new hand pump for the aft heads, with a smooth and effective pumping action that all crew members appreciate. Graham Curran replaced the forward heads pump in Cape Town; Tom Wood did the honours this time.

We still have miles of this race left to go, and there's plenty of work to do; I hope that by the time we get to Hobart, it still gets the Most Enjoyable rating!