Ahoy hoy. A couple days ago I received a personal email from my mother, as well as telling me about her various activities she said, and I quote “just hope the last 1000 nautical miles aren’t too horrific”. I’m not going to say much on the racing as currently we are secret sailing and in the Ocean Sprint, but I can say they’re not yet horrific. The last 1000nm are never my favourite in any race but we do have wind and we are going the right way.
Outside the general sailing chat the main conversation we’re having is what time zone we should be in. With the sun rising at around three in the morning boat time we’re definitely not in the right one. We could be clever and work it out as every 15 degrees of longitude west, UTC is minus an hour, but that seems way less fun than trying to guess. I have always thought one unique part of ocean racing is being in your own world where you can decide the time and when the changes happen. Sometimes we’re very on it and do regular changes to keep the sun rising at the societal norm of just before breakfast but sometimes we get distracted, forget, then suddenly the sun is rising at three in the morning.
Lots of boats have different methods of changing times and some don’t do it at all. I like to make it nice and complicated, by removing half an hour in the morning and then half an hour in the afternoon, that way not too much sleep is lost, and no one can complain the other watch got more or less sleep. Removing time so clocks go forward in half an hour stints is apparently quite confusing. Can’t think why. So really the only people who know what’s going on tends to just be Liz, Olly, Jono and myself, so for everyone else they just act as normal and wait to be told what to do and when to do things.
The finish to the race looks set to be a close one with the weather gods looking like they’re favouring the back of the fleet (to our utter relief). We may very well see a large fleet compression and some very tight battles all the way to the end. Before we all pressed our Stealth Mode buttons, we were definitely teeing up to some close racing with PSP Logistics and Dare To Lead with Bekezela storming up behind us. Tense it may be for sure, but first we still have quite a few miles to eat up so let’s not get ahead of ourselves ey.
Anyway that’s enough chat, best get back to invisible sailing in the wrong time zone.
All the best. Hannah, Ella and the Washington, DC Crew.