Race 13 - Day 4
Skipper Report
26 July
Hello team,
Are you well this “Two sleeps to go” Thursday? I use the term “Two Sleeps” for you armchair sailors following the endeavours of the GREAT Britain boat. If you were on the boat, depending on where you are in the watch system or if you are Mother between now and race finish on Saturday, there could be a number of different sleeps coming up. The one thing in common is though whether ashore or smashing through the Celtic Sea, we are all excited as the race draws to a close and normality returns.
The racing is still tight. Currently we have Dare To Lead (Morning Dale, thanks for your kind words yesterday and I whole heartily concur and am sure our paths will cross again once the call of the sea hits once more after we have been ashore for a while. It’s been a pleasure to work with all you guys.) less than 1nm behind us. We unfortunately messed up a basic tack coming around Virtual Mark Fastnet, meaning all the hard work put in and advantage we had gained over the day was lost in a few minutes of poor skills. At the moment, after spending all day yesterday closed hauled beating towards Virtual Mark Fastnet, we are close reaching towards Virtual Mark Scilly with the Yankee 2, stay and one reef in the main.
Talking of Scilly, names are leaping off the chart, like Celtic Sea, Nymphe Bank, which makes me feel at home again. Bread and Cheese Cove on St Martins in the Isles of Scilly, is one of my favourite anchorages, places like Freemantle and Sanya seem like a long way away now.
To follow on from Dale's point, I would like to thank a number of the Clipper Race Team ashore. The Media Team for spell checking all my blogs. The Partnership Team for making all the corporate events work seamlessly. The Maintenance Team, under the ever-watchful eye of Jay, they work miracles and always seem to do so with a smile, well almost always. Then of course the race office, especially to Mark and Sarah who do an outstanding job of herding the squirrels that are us Clipper Race Skippers. Thanks all for an amazing opportunity.
Well, after Tuesday’s disappointment at lunchtime, a mention in despatches today for Max and “3” Johns (John Mac) for an outstanding performance producing a vegetable stir fry in some pretty tough conditions below. Also a big thank you to Kate Blanks for a great cake, truly lovely, thanks.
Well, some of the last stats to consider as we move into the last 36 hours of racing. Our 24-hour run was 186nm (7.6kts average), of which 143nm was DMG. At 1400hrs we had 453nm of the course left to run.
Oh, did you know? The vast amount of the facts I have given you over the last seven months came from Mark Hanks' book “Usefully Useless – everything you'd never learn at school (but may like to know).
Standing by this Channel-out
Dave