Race 7 - Day 2
Crew Diary - Race 7 Day 2
25 February

We can’t tell you much about the first day of racing as we were stuck downstairs as mothers for much of it. All we heard was a mysterious whipping noise and a little shouting, followed by rumours of a snapped halyard. Thankfully there was absolutely no evidence of it by the time we went up on deck this morning so who knows…

What we do know is that Boattage Pie (Cottage pie on a boat) and peanut butter cookies for dinner went down pretty well.

When we did emerge backup on deck this morning we found ourselves in first position. We’re most definitely attributing this to Boattage Pie, we can’t really think of any other reason for such a miraculous recovery… though maybe the cookies had something to do with it too!?

Whilst us mothers were sleeping soundly overnight, the crew managed to creep past the majority of the fleet on white sails alone. We are now at the front of the fleet along with Qingdao and Zhuhai.

The renewed sense of racing focus has continued today. There have been many sail hosts and drops, much grinding, trimming the sails to perfection, and a heightened sense of concentration at the helm. Jeronimo was sent up the mast to swap out the defective halyard, one Spinnaker sheet has been repaired and reports were noted on all other lines. The crew are busy; we want to maintain our position. We want the win.

Spinnakers have gone up and Spinnakers have come down. We’ve had refresher lessons on trimming and are putting them into practice every half hour. “create twist, open the top of the sail, grind on the traveller, grind on the outhaul, is the staysail backing the luff? Are the telltales flying correctly?”.

Helming is strictly time-limited for maximum focus with a spotter standing by to make sure the helm is on track. We really do want that win. At some moments we’ve almost been close enough to see our friends on Zhuhai. Andrew and Mary kindly volunteered to make up the numbers on board for Race 7 whilst some of their team take a break. We miss them but we certainly can’t let them beat us. We really do want that win.