By Ina, co written by Harriet
So finally we left to cross this ocean. I was ready to go. After passing our start marks we took a different route than the rest of the fleet and we quickly settled down in our watch system. As we are taking the practise of anticipating what could happen next, Skip said our next tack is in October and we should think thoroughly about that, we think we have enough time to get it right!
As the wind got lighter so did the atmosphere. We are having conversations about our backgrounds, we practise knots and I ask questions about things I still haven’t understood yet. The more the sun burns the more silly we get.
Setting sail for the second time in this race feels very different from our first experience, we are more familiar with each other, with the roles on board, with where everything else, with know how to wind up the skipper. We have reviewed what we learned in our first week and are applying our improvements – eg better stowing or our stuff so below deck looks less like a teenagers bedroom that it did last week! Little bit more rigor about the cleaning and punctuality – these are all things that could create all sorts of shenanigans among the crew over a four week period in a confined space and shenanigans is what we want to avoid!
Our next waypoint is 1600 nm away, London is 200 nm closer! Boy this going to a long stint!
The wind continues to get lighter, which annoyingly means changing the sail from the spinnaker to the Yankee 1 – total palaver, stowing the spinkar ie 380 square metres of material. Imagine trying to pack a double duvet into a sock inside an oven and that’s close to what this process is like. There is an incentive for us to get faster and faster at this. Today it was easier and faster than it has been as were smart enough to have a little practice on the dockside in Portimão.
The biggest disaster today was me overcookings some flapjacks – pan’s a bit of a mess and there are sugary crumbs everywhere. The road to hell is paved with good intentions!!