Good morning,
This is not something that you will often hear the Unicef nomads say: We are heading for home! Only 730nm remain between us and the finish line in Subic Bay. This morning we are still hard on the wind skirting our way back down the Nansei Island chain. Conditions are beautiful and the sea is smooth. We are viewing the first half of this race as practice for next time. The upwind conditions have been hard on the crew and boat at times, but we have managed to avoid breakages and we have tried to avoid making too many mistakes.
We almost have a full complement of crew again. The Dell Latitude Rugged Ocean Sprint was a bit of a relay race as different people got seasick and others succumbed to some stomach lurgy. The minefield of buckets, some swinging, some empty, others not so, are now vanishing which is a relief. The main learning points that we will try and take forward are; 1 - Avoid sailing upwind; 2 - Try and sail in the right direction.
The next few hundred miles of our return journey are likely to remain upwind, in heavy monsoon rain with much ship dodging. However, we did get the chance to enjoy a brief spell of downwind sailing last night. Under a star-filled sky we hoisted the biggest sail in our powerful downwind arsenal and let rip. And well. Rather ironically, we completely blew it. (Perhaps the wrong choice of wording here) I mean we blew the opportunity. As the wind unexpectedly rotated, we found ourselves too far down wind and therefore trying to sail back upwind AGAIN, only this time with the spinnaker!! Baaa.
To make us feel better, the numbers folk ran their cosiness whilst the feeling people checked their star signs. We might be a little biased, but the consensus was that although we sailed further at breakneck speed, in the end it was all pretty much even. Alex, we need you back!!! (We need the mathematical, tactical genius, your logic, and real answers.) There is a risk out here, cut off from the world, news and a well known search engine that rhymes with frugal, that you can convince yourself of just about anything. We find ourselves asking the big questions today. What do Saki and Shima really mean????
Here we go.
Ian and Mike