The past two days have seen the fleet transition between a wind hole as we came out of Cape Town, into 30 knots of wind overnight, around 200 nautical miles south of the Cape of Good Hope.
Yesterday we were drag racing with Qingdao and it has been a constant tit-for-tat battle with each of us taking turns to be ahead. It was awesome sailing at around 12 knots downwind, with Qingdao, Our Isles and Oceans, and Perseverance all within sight throughout the day. However, last night they managed to gain on us as we had a kitemare. The donut (and backup donut) which attached the strops to our clew to hold the sheets (the line which controls the sail) blew, leaving our spinnaker to be flying more as an elaborate forestay banner as opposed to a sail. Some quick thinking enabled the tack retrieval line to be re-run and a mammoth effort from the crew got our Code 3 got back on deck. Unfortunately, we got a tear near the tack during this, which our sail repair team; Zina and Fausto have already mended. Now we are back on white sails, and starting to head East, the wind and swells are forecasted to build today, so it shouldn’t be long until we begin our surfing contest to Australia.
UPDATE: This sailing is incredible, the max speed of today is 22.3 knots, and we have overtaken Qingdao! We are so excited. Vamos Australia.
Laura, Dan, and the UNICEF team