Race 7 - Day 9
Crew Diary - Another wind hole
03 March

Yesterday we had strong winds. Some days speed records were broken, first Rhiannon, then Matt, Chris and Frankie with the highest top speed of 25.1kts using the Yankee, Staysail and Main with no reef in. Red watch was behind the helm watching the records being broken, any speed over 22kts makes the water come over the deck and every one on and behind the helm will get wet.

Michelle and George on mother watch made a nice crumble and custard, not all of Gold watch had their crumble by 0400, some crumble had gone missing, we had crumble gate!

We were the first to go through both scoring gates picking up 6 points. When gybing, the Code 3 got into a twist which it could not get itself out of. We lowered it down onto the foredeck, down the sail lockers hatch and Bertrand looked over it and did lots of little hole repairs on it. The day before we had the Code 2 repair to do when it wrapped around the forestay and the Code 1 ripped its head off, needing major repair when getting back to Subic Bay.

Today we were in a wind hole doing 0.5 to1 kts with the Windseeker up. This evening we have Kerry on Code 2 trim and Anthony on grinder and doing 7 - 8 kts.

The Clipper Race office put in 2 new gates, passed one at tea time should get to the next one in 8 - 9 hours at this speed but another big wind hole is forecasted. Kevin and Phil are missing out on this race, hope they had a good break and have both recovered from injuries.

Oh, and we had Jo’s welsh flag out on St David's Day!

Hope that our Qingdao supporter Sam got back okay at the start of the race, thanks son for coming out.

Lots of love, Doeke