Blog

If this were a movie the last two days would have made for some nice drama
on the high seas, imagine the context, a fleet of racing boats headed for
Cape Horn, a South Pacific gale battering the fleet, huge waves crashing
against the boat through the night, the constant noise of haliards hitting
the mast, leech lines flapping, autopilot ram overloaded, water sloshing
in the bilges, the smell of your own boots turning your stomach inside
out, wet, cold, miserable...

The sat phone rings, no one has ever called us on the satphone, you
suspect it will not be Bart Simpson pulling one of his Moe's phone pranks,
who is it then? Another competitor on the end of the blurred satellite
line sounding emotional sums the reality of the situation "we are
considering retiring".

We have now been at sea for 2 full days and slowly getting back in the
swing of ocean life, daily food bags, sail changes, position reports, naps
and snacks... the start of this leg was far from simple for us with lots
of little snags to worry about, the brand new spare NKE wind wand started
throwing an error before even leaving the dock, but too late to do
anything about it, the master alternator wasn't initially charging the
batteries, the ballast pump didnt respond and the mast navigation and deck
lights would not work on the first night...

When we left Wellington harbour in about 10 knots of wind we were caught
completely by surprise finding 35 knots just outside, probably
Wellington's way of waving us goodbye.

We had been doing great all night shaving mile after mile from Halvard
Mabire and Miranda Merron's lead over us, we were flying the smallest
spinnaker, a bullet proof job called the A5, a sail that can be used even
if 40 knots of wind, which is not far from what we had, sustained 30-35,
the usual treatment down here... until disaster struck, the halyard parted
and the sail went down into the water.

Halvard and Miranda were 750 miles ahead of us just a few days back, and
with a bit of luck but also by pushing very hard we brought down the gap
to under 240 miles, a 510 miles catch up!

So here we are in yet another 45 knots stinker, making excellent progress
under staysail and reefed main, occasionally surfing high teens. The front
came and went and we were left with that nasty situation where you have
massive seas and decreasing winds...

Yesteday we passed Cape Leeuwin, about 500 miles to our north and have
now, geographically speaking, entered the Pacific Ocean...

I may sound boring if i reiterate that we're still in 35-40 knots of wind,
we have not seen anything less than 25 and anything up to 55 for the past
week and inevitably we've suffered some level of damage.

Australia is now only 750 miles above our heads but the finish line still
some 3100 miles to the east, it's a long bloody way to New Zealand!

The first major item to pack up was the Watt&Sea hydrogenerator, the
bracket that holds it on the back of the boat buckled as a side wave must
have pushed the leg with great force, the leg itself is bent and for now
it is unserviceable.

Secondly, and more frustratingly, one of the two NKE wind wands has packed
up as a front swept over our heads, it read 55 knots minutes before
ceising to work.

The low that two days ago gave us a kicking upwind has moved to the SE and
now we are running in the strong following winds behind the cold front.
All looks ideal on paper and i'm sure it must look exciting to see us on
the tracker dashing at twice the speed compared to just 48 hours ago...
down here however we are getting a little more entertainement than we had
anticipated, the wind has piped up to 40-45 knots, which i hear you say,
is to be expected, there seems to be always a lot more wind than
predicted... as early as this morning we were flying the small spinnaker,
but then we changed down to the solent and now we are flying our staysail
with reefed main and still occasionally hitting 20knots surfs...

A few hours ago we tacked south follwing Phesheya's example to distance
ourselves from the worst of the winds of the low pressure north west of
us. By the time we tacked the wind was already blowing a full force 7
gusting 8 yet according to the grib files we should have had about 20
knots of wind and it was due to get a lot worse...

The cold front is about to reach us, behind us i can see broken clouds and
some blue sky here and there, it rained earlier and the wind has kept on
backing.

We've now been at sea for 8 days, many of which are just a blur. In the
last few we've been reaching in fairly stable winds and it gets a bit
monotonous. I'm in no way complaining as it looks like we're going to get
our backs kicked in a few days by a cold front with strong and gusty winds
so we may as well enjoy the easy ride for now.

I've taken the chance to eat more than in the previous days and add as
much as possible to the rest and energy bank as i'm sure we still have to
see a lot worse than so far.

Our distance to Phesheya has been fairly constant but we've lost VHF and
AIS contact which is a shame as a friendly voice in the middle of the
ocean really makes your day.

After six days of racing i have a sense of deja vu, the three new boats
are at the front and here futher back we are nearly in visual contact with
Phesheya Racing which is about 7 miles to our port, we had a brief radio
chat and as we are converging we should actually see them pretty soon...
the same had happened by the Gibriltar and again by the coast of Morocco
in leg one. The two boats are same design and same speed and it makes it
real special in the solitude of the Southern Ocean to have your fellow
racers and friends close by...

It's another very pleasant sunny day and we should enjoy stable and
relatively light conditions for a few days ahead.

If you are looking at a non-surgical equivalent to a gastric band look no
further, come to the great south where we'll make you feel a constant knot
around your stomach to lose weight. In the past few days it's been either
windy or freaking windy, and as far as I understand this still absolutely
nothing compared to what we might get.

Yesterday we got caught small spinnaker up in a front with gusts up to 45
knots and had to wrestle the thing down, we just discussed the strategy
for the night and we really have to balance speed with safety and gear
preservation, it still is a long long way to Wellington and with no land
in sight any major breakages would mean a very very long limp to the
finish.