Race 7 - Day 2
Skipper Report
25 February
Hello Team,
Are we well, this ‘Testing Tuesday’, questioned yourself if things are going according to plan? After a day of making steady progress, a minor hiccup and strangely enough the disappearance of the wind in the earlier hours before breakfast, has tested one a little this morning, especially after having had a good run the previous 12 hours.
As the first light comes up over the horizon, we are 82nm south of VM Massey and Zhuhaiis off to port just under 2nm away. Morning Wendo, James and team, lovely to see you on such a still morning, although I did prefer it when all I could see of Zhuhai, was as an AIS target on TIMEZERO, showing you 7 miles behind us. Still, part of that is our own making, in terms of some minor damage we had caused on a previous race, was repaired in Subic Bay, but we found out that the “repair” didn’t fully function causing us to have to abandon a Kite hoist 90% of the way into it. Which you might say isn’t a problem, and you are correct. We are still however perfecting our ways of doing evolutions with only five crew and a helm on deck. Then as you know, when something small goes wrong, the whole thing gathers momentum, then you have the kite half in the water. However, Sounders would not be beaten by an issue caused by a halyard not running through a jammer, nor the Code 2 trying to take a bath. All recovered and on we trotted. SeaHawks came on watch, the Kite was repacked and hoisted only for the wind machine to run out of credit. All this, as we watched Zhuhai come over the horizon at what looked at a great rate of knots. The good news is they didn’t scream past, they have joined us for a gentle drift, in a sort of northerly direction.
Our break from normality in the last 24 hours, was just after we had the windseeker set, before breakfast and we started to make some progress, a fishing vessel, of a more familiar size and appearance appeared, we altered course to avoid her. The vessel then moved back towards us. This happened about three times, it was then clear they were trying to approach us. Shortly afterwards they came across alongside and on the bow were two happy fishermen, from the Philippines, waving at us and shouting “Do you have any cigarettes?” (Kiki – the time we needed you for something other than helming!) We stated that we didn’t have any. They then produced this enormous fish. I have no idea what it was, it was however, certainly bigger than Melanie and two of them to lift it up. “Cigarettes for fish?” Came the call. Now at that point the distance to VM Massey was 66nm and giving us 56 hours to get there, that was a tempting offer, other than we didn’t have any cigarettes to trade. Also, the thought of the after smells of cooked fish down below in the current heat didn’t really sell it to me either.
We are thinking of setting up a club, “WOLD”, West of Luzon Drifters, to apply you must have failed to make 50 nm in a straight-line over 12 hours, or have drifted backwards towards your start point for more than at least 1 nm. We are hoping that those joining for Leg 6 don’t have the opportunity to apply for it!
Clearly in times like this there are lots of conversations and discussions on board. There just been one about relationships. My input was that I compare relationships to Algebra. Why? Haven’t you ever looked at your X and wondered Y?
That's all for now,
Dave & “Number 1”