Race 3 - Day 17
Crew Diary - Race 3 Day 17: Cape Town to Fremantle
17 November

We are sailing at last! Sailing in the authentic Southern Ocean style we dreamed of and in a way that just might get us to Fremantle in time for the party! But what a day it was before we got sailing again.

The night before last I woke in my bunk to hear Bob on the satellite phone to Race Office with some news about Liverpool 2018 and a forestay incident. It sounded ominous. When I got up on deck at dawn, the mainsail lay roughly tied up on one side of the deck, the foresails were down and there was much activity at the bow of the boat: the big shackle holding our forestay had sheered off and was holding us only as a distorted hook with a rusty open surface.

The hook could have opened within hours, with catastrophic consequences. Maybe the yankee could have held out while an improvised halyard took on the role of the forestay, or it might have torn apart and resulted in the failure of our mast at the top spreaders. For the next four hours we worked hard (much of the time trying to locate tools and spare parts from the depths of the engineers' lockers) with crew poised on the bowsprit to release the old fitting, another lowered into the water to try to salvage a replacement shackle from the fitting down on the waterline of the bow which holds the bowsprit in place, while a third team laboured firstly to ease the tension of the backstays and then, with massive efforts, to slowly wind the tension back up once the replacement had been fitted.

It was an impressive effort of teamwork at both ends of the boat: the drama of the crew effecting some improvised engineering on the waterline while the increasing waves threw him to and fro, while an international team at the stern, British, French and American, re-enacted their boat race starts, grasping the 2 foot spanner as if it were an oar and thrusting with the thighs to get the required leverage!

We had a seaworthy vessel by the end of my watch, but, together with my watch partner, James, we remained on deck to:

1. Raise the staysail

2. Raise the mainsail

3. Pull back, flake, bag and store the yankee 4. Get the heavyweight spinnaker on deck, attach and hoist 5. Drop the staysail 6. Attach and hoist the wrap net 7. Hoist Seaumus to the top of the mast to attach the second spinnaker sheet

We were then, at last, and so gratifyingly, SAILING! Time at last to go back down for my 4 hours' 'rest', which was my chance to make the bread I had been planning all morning: two sundried tomato and basil loaves. Kneading it proved a wonderfully therapeutic contrast, before getting a couple of hours rest in my bunk.

Back on deck for the late afternoon watch, the sky was clear, the sun was shining and the breeze was strong. It was exhilarating on the helm: requiring total concentration to bear away at the first sign of a gust or the lift of a wave from the stern. The waves were beginning to organise themselves into ranks of rollers, the size of respectable bungalows, and the surfs started to build.

Behind us the sun turned our wake into a brightly glittering silver trail as it dropped towards the horizon, but our sunset was to be smothered by a threatening bank of gun metal grey cloud. The delicate, wispy clouds that I had used to steer by suddenly disappeared as the wind increased. At first that added to the fun: our surfing records increased from 14.9 to 16, 17 and finally 19 knots, beating the record of the previous watch, but as darkness fell we wondered whether it would be wiser to drop the spinnaker.

A few sudden gusts of wind that overpowered me at the helm made the decision clear and our watch ended by putting in a reef, wresting the spinnaker from the greedy winds and hoisting the staysail before then end of our watch.

It had been a great and highly productive day. We made refreshing progress towards Australia, despite the 10 lost hours replacing our forestay shackle, we had the wind and the waves behind us again and even my tomato and basil loaf had proved popular! I went to sleep with a new 'hull homesong' in my ears: no hint of leisurely bubbles but the sustained hiss and swish of fast moving water against our hull.