Race 7 - Day 6
Skipper Report
29 February

Hello Team,

How are we doing this once every four year day, it's Saturday are you off out and about? Well it feels like a busy day this end for 100’s of miles there are no marks, then suddenly like buses two come along together. At the moment we are just short of VM Knox-Johnston and it only seems a couple of hours ago that we hoisted the Code 2 and rounded VM Ward OBE.

Yesterday afternoon we were able to switch to the Yankee 1, now fully repaired, thanks to Dawn’s hard work. Sounders did Dawn’s repair proud, with an excellent racing headsail change, with Jane on the helm, Dawn in the pit, while Tim, Queenie and Mauricio beavered away on the foredeck, while I bounced around between the “World of Chaos” and “Planet Adrenaline”, mainly getting in the way. That has helped us move more steadily towards the mark overnight, as the wind has been a little lighter than expected, the main thing though there has been wind.

As we converge on the Mark Ward OBE, Imagine your Korea appeared on the AIS, shortly before breakfast. I called them up on the VHF and had a chat with Capt’n Graham, where we tried not to talk about the previous edition of the race to much, we’ll do that no doubt when we meet up in Subic Bay and go to a little French restaurant, that we have discovered, that do a very good steak and even better fine wines.

The Marmite appeal has already begun to reap rewards, thank you Capt’n Josh and the Ha Long Bay, Viet Nam crew for the jar of Marmite, we can offer you some toffee cake mix, tinned meatballs or Lyndsay aka ‘Number 1’ is very keen to off load some tins of spam, however, I quite like spam thinly cut and fried, but maybe that's an age thing?

Right, I am going to sign off now as we are approaching VM Knox-Johnston, we need to hoist the Yankee and douse the Kite and head towards VM Knight and as with all mark rounding the Clipper Race yachts are converging in the East China Sea, as Dare to Lead pops up on the Nav Computer some 16nm behind. Morning Guy, Mike and Crew.

Lorraine, please say hi to Janet and Ian for me, hope you all have a great weekend together. Very jealous hopefully we’ll be able to repeat in the autumn when home. Will await an update when I get back to Subic Bay and we can FaceTime.

I studied quantum physics at University. I knew where all my lectures were, but I just couldn’t get the measure of them.

That's all for now,

Dave & “Number 1”