(Written by First Mate Al Jay)
Well the rapid clock changes have caught us out again as we head north-east into long nights and early dawns. Chris is asleep so I'm filling in again with Qingdao's progress over the past two days. We have had some pretty strong and consistent winds pushing us in the right direction, and great surfing conditions, with the bar being set at 23.9kts by Geoff in gusts of 35kts lasting most of Friday.
We will be entering the Ocean Sprint at a fairly high latitude by tonight and go through 1 degree of longitude by Sunday night, with a very strong breeze to help us on our way to another time shift, as we reach boat time equal to that of Greenwich Mean Time (GMT). We are now getting the benefit of stunning 4am sunrises and daylight until 2200.
Reaching our parallel GMT time will be a massive milestone, having travelled around the globe, we are now feeling like we are ‘nearly there'. For that reason there was a great likelihood of an early arrival into Derry~Londonderry on 11 June. So instead we have all decided to go sightseeing near the north-west coast of Scotland before heading back south to Ireland, well the Race Office have decided on our behalf! This has been met with delight on CV30 as it’s another 24 hours to keep recovering lost ground and pushing hard until the Finish Line, so we keep on grinding, trimming and laughing hard and fast until the end.
Al and Chris