Race 14 - Day 9
Skipper Report
07 July

Whale news: they really do exist!

Yes, over the past couple of days we have seen so many whales, of different flavours (humpback, right? and probably minke) that all the Imagine your Korea crew now believe in them. Rob 'Lion King' Stewart, Rob 'Ginger Mountain' Skipper and Jonny 'Vin Rouge' Wallington all saw a humpback less than a boat length away - way too close for comfort on either side, whilst others spouted so close that even Annette Rolfe could see them.

We were also ambushed by a large gang (ok, call it a pod if you must) of dolphins zooming in from all directions and playing around the bow for a while, synchronised leaping and all. The tropic bird that had been tailing us since New York (or maybe even Bermuda) has finally gone home. So that's the wildlife box well and truly ticked for everyone on Leg 8.

Weather-wise things have been trickier - the long-expected front eventually came through last night and left us with some unexpectedly strong northerly wind through most of the day. This kept us moving better than the wind hole we had been expecting, but not in the direction (northeast) we really want to travel, so we have lost more miles on the rest of the fleet who are cracking on further down the line. That particular wind hole finally found us this evening - Jonny Boy 'enjoyed' leading both watches through about 20 sail changes and a minor Code 2 repair during his 6 hour shift, whilst I ate Jo Warne's leftover chilli and pretended not to notice what was going on upstairs.

Cheers, Rob