Good Morning, It’s Rhiannon here this morning, for the latest installment of Qingdao's skipper blog.
It's been an eventful 24 hours on board. Much of those hours have been spent making our way southwards around 'VM Light' and onwards towards the Eastern scoring gate.
This time however did not come without its difficulties. It would seem the boat fairies have been causing mischief onboard and wishing our spinnaker manoeuvres and spinnakers themselves bad luck, so it’s been go go go for all the crew onboard to get spinnakers repaired, as well as recovering from a few tangles between manoeuvres.
On top of this, we have had Unicef (Hi Ian and Mike) who have been pushing exceedingly hard and putting the pressure on to sail clean and fast for at least the last 12 hours now. Throughout these 12 hours they've been well within sight and that's both made us try to step up our game and work extra hard on our spinnaker trim and driving.
This morning, just after breakfast we came through the eastern scoring gate just ahead of Unicef, and from there we have spent the last six hours heading back west into more pressure and towards the western scoring gate. Right about now, whilst writing this, we are just a little ahead of Unicef, all guns blazing and heading towards the western scoring gate trying to pick up a couple more bonus points. Keep your fingers crossed for us as we have about an hour left to this scoring gate!
From the western scoring gate, we will be heading back to the best named virtual mark on the race course, and onwards towards the dreaded west coast of Luzon. Third time lucky hopefully, as we all wish for a lack of windholes this time!
That's all for now, have a great day wherever you are in the world :)
Rhiannon, Chris and all the crew on Qingdao!