Race 3 - Day 11
Skipper Report
03 November
Good morning,
The last 24 hours have been rather lively on Imagine your Korea. We passed into the second low pressure system and travelled north to get on top of the circulation and boy it blew. Reaching gusts of 50 knots, it was ‘hang onto your hat’ time, and just to make sure that Neptune made us all aware who is in charge, he threw a hail of almost ice like rain at us. Probably not one of the most pleasant experiences at the time, but with a little embellishment, fading of minds and rose tinted memory, it will make a great tale for the pub.
Jonny (one of our two Watch Leaders) did one of the most monumentally long helming sessions in the most difficult of circumstances and was still jolly at the end of it, some of his Sandhurst training shone through I sense.
As the winds grew, we had to change our head sails and it was most impressive to see how focused the crew was to go to the foredeck and recover the downcoming sail with the vessel pitching and rolling. Each and every one of them were rewarded with a thorough dunking in the South Atlantic while sitting on the bow. Thierry was a superstar and was bouncing around the bow irrespective of the conditions, and of course he continued to collect data and make his daily tactical recommendations, all of which have been central to our actions that you will have been able to follow on the Race Viewer.
Below deck, our magnificent sailing machine is becoming a not so magnificent Turkish bath with all the wet clothing and foul weather gear leaving a unique smell and a humid environment but thankfully we are oblivious to much of it as it’s been our living environment for the last few days.
We are currently in the centre of the low pressure system and we have a flat sea and steady winds. Our position north means that we should now have a clear run on a port tack to an area somewhere south of Cape Town ready for our final approach
We now have just under 1400 nautical miles to go and our daily miles to the finish line should be increasing as our VMG (velocity made good) will now increase as we are heading east fairly constantly. It won't be too long before we will be measuring our VTB (velocity to the bar).
Normal love and regards,
Mike and the crew of CV20 Imagine your Korea