Race 5 - Day 18
Skipper Report
09 January

Good morning Black Betty fans, how is it blog o'clock again already? We are currently 449.1 nautical miles from the finish line at Airlie Beach, and yes the 0.1 is important!

The last 24 hours have seen varying amounts of wind, and a couple of different sail plans to keep us going as well as we can in the wind that we have. Some of the last scheds have been quite encouraging, with some good gains made on some of the fleet.

The team are doing a sterling job at keeping Black Betty on the given course, despite my constant instructions such as “change course 5 degrees to leeward”, '”come up 10, 'bring her high and chase the speed down”, all sorts of sailing speak going on, all in the interest of seeking every last point of a knot out of our good ship.

In other news, we received a message from our Anthony at WTC Logistics today, wishing the crew well and letting us know that they are all following our trips up and down the leaderboard very closely. It is great to have this support from the guys that give their name to the team, and to know they are following our progress so closely is great for team morale.

It's a short one today, as with now only 446.8 nautical miles left in this race every point of a knot counts so I'm back off to the deck to say some more boaty sounding things in the hunt for more speed. As for the 0.1 of a mile counting, I have a feeling that there maybe some finishes closer than that at the end of this race, so now really must head up to to bear down and come up 10 whilst grinding some more tension on the squirrel brace to increase our performance.

BLACK BETTY OUT!