Race 8 - Day 5
Skipper Report
09 March

Hello Team,

Are we all smiles this 'Fizz Friday', maybe my wife Lorraine can have my glass or two, as am a little tied up this end to indulge this evening. Looking forward to sharing a glass in Seattle though. This end has not been the best of the last few days, so would probably be wrong to partake in any case.

So, what is troubling the Skipper of the Great team this morning, I hear you enquire? Well, it’s a document on the computer, called “CV30 Performance Data”.

“Yes, that one – it’s even got its own shortcut on the desk top, look just there, bottom left, that's it you can see it remotely on your desk top – now double click it and open it up.”

“What's the issue?” I hear you state.

“Look there, lines 24 and 25, dated 080318 1200Z and 1800Z respectively, look at all that red (poor performance compared to previous six hours and the rest of the fleet). It looks like the share value of a multi-national, which Serious Fraud Office has announced it just started to investigate.”

Well it could be worse, we could be in the middle of the Elliot Brown Ocean Sprint. Oh yes, I forgot, we are!

The sailing over the last day has been an introduction to upwind sailing with winds in the high 20 to mid-30 knots range, giving AWS (Apparent Wind Speed) in the high 30s at times, for the joiners on Leg 5 and a refresher for the rest of us, after the benign conditions of Race 7.

We are currently sailing closed hauled. With the Yankee 3 and a couple of reefs, crashing over the waves, I am regularly launched upwards off the navigation station seat as I write this blog, only to be reunited with the same seat, in a non graceful manner. The sound of rushing water pouring across the deck as waves break across the bow and against the hull, are accompanied shortly afterwards by the dripping of sea water onto the same seat and slightly more disappointingly onto my bunk, so some additional maintenance is already listed for the Qingdao stopover. Many crew are sporting their yellow Henri Lloyd dry suits and those without look on enviously. As one team member (Phil Gunn) looked for reassurance before going up on deck overnight, he gave the quote of the day for this Great boat: “I keep forgetting that these boats can handle the weather so much better than me.”

There have been great training opportunities over the last 24 hours. Alanna Ticknor, Matthias Stocker and Luise Birgelen got their first chance of changing down to the Yankee 3, in some challenging conditions. We have found how easy it is to go from close hauled at 10 knots to hoved-to in a few seconds in rough seas at night. How difficult communication is in 30+ knots of wind with crashing seas at night, resulting in a misunderstanding, causing the luff slider gate on the master to be pulled off. [Mention in despatches for Ray Gibson who spent over an hour up the mast repairing the gate, awesome stuff. Although as he was comfortably tucked in tight to the main sail and the boat was heeled over, I wasn't sure if he was having a power nap, as Ray does have the ability to sleep anywhere.]

The other thing that was discovered is it would appear you can easily go in completely the opposite direction to the way point for nearly four miles before realising it, but on a positive note we hit our best boat speed for that time, 11 knots! So maybe it’s not the Serious Fraud Squad causing an outbreak of red on the spreadsheet, it’s all the learning opportunities that have been presented to us. That after all is pretty priceless.

Comedy moment of the last day: I awoke after three hours sleep in the last 18, hair matted with sea salt. Wearing a dark red body tight base top, a pair of black tight sports boxer shorts, I put on my glasses that appear to have got twisted frames in all this banging around below deck. “Morning Pip,” I greet Miss O'Sullivan who is in the Nav Station. She turns, looks me up and down and stated: “Lorraine must be so proud.”

Friday Fizzy stats: best boat speed has been 11kts (the wrong way); current VMG is 7.5kts; distance run in last 24: 199nm; DTF = 1018nm. Oh, did you know, a peach was the first fruit eaten on the moon.

Tricky Thursday answer to; “What do you break by saying its name?” Silence.

Standing by the channel – out.

Dave