Race 4 - Day 10
Crew Diary - Race 4 Day 10: Fremantle to Sydney
12 December

Chess on the water

The last two days couldn‘t have been more different. Yesterday we continued our way south west. Grey sky, sometimes rain, strong winds and a rough sea. Everyone in full foul weather gear including base and mid-layers, gloves etc. Exactly what you would expect in the Southern Ocean. But lots of smiles on the faces of the different helmsmen and helmswomen (and other crew watching) who tried to increase their personal speed records surfing down the large waves. This time we made up to 25 knots. Not the boat record, but nonetheless very impressive to see and feel.

Less than 20 hours later, the situation is absolutely opposite. Sunny sky, no wind, flat sea and lots of t-shirts and shorts on deck. Plus music for lunch. But it became everything else than a relaxed day working on our sun tans. The experience with the windhole from leg 3 sits deep. So we were extensively trying to get the ship moving again.

On leg 3 Sanya Serenity Coast got in that windhole by being ahead of the fleet. Now the leading three yachts were in the same situation. And we could see each other on the horizon. All on a level playing field. All trying to find the best next move. Watching each other with binoculars to get a feeling for the reaction of the other teams to the wind changes (at least we did). On Sanya Serenity Coast we changed and tested over 5 different sail configurations in one watch alone. Hoisting a sail is fast, but repacking can take up to one hour.

Nevertheless we had to log distances made good of 0 nautical miles per hour. Fortunately not for so long. In the afternoon the wind slightly picked up and we got the right configuration to head on.

Right now (6 hours later) everything is back to normal, meaning strong winds and heeling at 45 degrees.

....Aaaand just as we were going to send this blog we hit another wind hole! It's quite relaxing really - we are on watch enjoying stunning sunset and using binoculars to look at both Qingdao (5 miles away from us) and Seattle (2 miles away). This is a super tight race indeed - for a few hours we were sailing just 300 meters away from Visit Seattle. And this is after 2000NM of racing! It's quite ironic that Visit Seattle is actually in the stealth mode. We were trying to respect them and didn't stare at them too much:)