'Ello Folks, well ding ding round 2!
Well before we slipped lines today, I was getting very much into the Portuguese vibe. Although we didn't break much compared to other yachts - we still had a busy schedule doing maintenance and minor repairs. We also had a corporate day sail with Hyde Sails which was great fun and it gave us a chance to do a shake down sail, and find and remind ourselves of a few snags that had slipped through the net. I do take off/ don my hat to the crew the way they gathered themselves ready to complete the dreaded deep clean and safety checklist after the slow and elongated finish to Race . Some had only had very little sleep but they all pulled together (and most importantly all in the right direction!).
Well here we are now sailing at night with the kite up with Gibraltar on the beam. We have only been sailing for eight hours and the fleet has already split. I only have Punta del Este and Visit Sanya, China on my AIS (close quarters tracking system) so we will wait for the daily updates to see how the fleet has opened up.
The crew and I were chatting, saying how we could not wait to get back to sea, and now we are here it feels like we never left (we much prefer to be at sea every thing is so much simpler)! I’ll let you all into a little bit of advice I was told by some old skippers .... if you want a day off ... go to sea!!
Right, we need to work on our helming as we have spent the last couple of hours zig-zagging and flogging. To give you a visual representation through my keyboard, our nearest competitors track looks like this --------- and ours is similar to this /\/\/\/\/ . I’m hoping it's just everyone getting used to the boat again but this is not sustainable for 5,000 miles! ill let you know how the night pans out..
So it has panned out like this trimming is going very well but we all need to pick up on our helming, so I must go and become the ever-so-popular talking backstay...
P.S. Happy Birthday to Ivan on board our boat. I don't think he will mind me saying that he is an astonishing 62 today. I used to play football with guys almost half his age who were not as fit as he is... but I shan't tell you his secret to a young mind and body - I will let him tell you.
From Josh and the crew of Ha Long Bay, Viet Nam