‘Ello folks,
Aaaand we're off!!!! I was told by the lead skipper controlling the Le Mans start, that he believes this was the first start to be run at night!
Since our last race, our crew have been scratching their heads to try and work out what was holding us back (we came ninth) and I will admit, we made a fair few mistakes (we call them Ha Long Bad days). But now we're back and ready to get ourselves as far up the fleet as possible.
Well, it started as a hot sweaty day with very little wind and the first order was to do our refresher sail. So we got our Code 3 up and made sure all the repairs were holding and fitting together nicely and I can say a massive well done to Mike, Tim and Haz, you all did an amazing repair job on the Code 3. Then it was MOB drills and reefing drills, which took us all the way to the start.
We've been racing a little over 12 hours now and the fleet are so tightly bunched, there are only a few miles separating us from windward to leeward and first to the 'not so first.' It's quite interesting to see, we have Zhuhai to the north flying their Code 1 and Dare To Lead to the south flying a Code 2 (okay not massively interesting for the non sailors out there) to help, maybe think of it in F1 terms. It's like one car driving on soft tyres and the other on hard.
At the time of writing we have 90 miles to the end of the first Dell Latitude Rugged Ocean Sprint - I suspect it will come down to three major factors - Helm, Trim! and whoever manages to avoid flogging their Kite!!
Hope you're all well back home, I believe I'll see you all, in around 147 days, but’till then there is a lot of cool sailing to do.
And finally, with heavy fingers typing we are missing a couple of crew for various reasons and we would just like to say Nuno, David, Chrissie and Haz you will all be sorely missed and we hope this finds you well.
Josh, Hugo and the crew of Ha Long Bay, Viet Nam
Song of the day: Flora Cash - You’re somebody else