Race 7 - Day 22
Crew Diary - Race 7 Day 22: Whitsundays to Sanya
21 February

Be Careful What You Wish For

We may or may not have considered asking Fred to construct a special wind hole for us. This hypothetical wind hole would have a great big space for all boats in front of us and the two very close behind – AND – a special path, with nice steady breeze to scoot us straight to the front of the pack. What has been received is a wind hole, for the lot of us. One good thing - we are easing more in front of those behind and getting tantalising close to the two in front. It has given us hope that the podium in this race is not beyond our means. We do well in light air. Even better now that we seem to have embraced our spinnakers.

A few nights ago, in pretty choppy seas with pretty strong wind – basically the only thing going for the spinnaker flight was the wind angle, in the dark, (it had been a light wind day) on our watch – yay for the challenge! - the decision was made to launch the Code 2. Mable came up from down below to be released for a bit of exercise. Up she went – and down came the head sails – and she was flying. Yikes! Glad I wasn't behind the wheel – Wendy started the shift then our best took over. It looked hard. Lots of trimming and grinding of winches, we were all on the edges of our seats. Mable was singing hard rock and roll and loving it. We were going FAST! By the end of the watch things had calmed down and classic rock was on the play list. We had made it through 3 hours with no wraps and even few collapses. I am very proud of us, the fear seems to have eased and we are much more comfortable with the spinnakers. We took time out of everyone that night.

So, back to this wind hole which may or may not be here as a result of discussions with Fred – it has given us some very pleasant sailing – if we weren't IN A RACE that is. I am coming to the conclusion that one needs to be able to rejoice in the victories and let go those which are stolen away from us by things completely beyond our control: weather actuals, redress and redress. Otherwise, you would be totally shattered when you run into a wind hole that was not on any of the recent GRIB files. Instead we can enjoy the flat sailing, our “Mothers” can have comfortable watches and we can spend hours talking about the things we will enjoy most when we finally arrive into Sanya. We will be there soon.