The best bits so far

Almost 10,000 nautical miles sailed and there have been some great things to remember, here are the top ten, in no particular order of favourite:

1. The departure from London, an amazing send off and so much emotion with family and great friends

Rio Baby

Arriving with only two full days in Rio in which to clean and mend the boat as well as re stocking with food really wasn’t going to allow time for sightseeing.
However my unrealistic, optimistic self thought otherwise and that’s probably why I feel so disappointed.

That said, we did turn the boat around and set sail on time, currently enjoying an upwind slog with huge waves crashing over us. In the log book our sea condition

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The end of the beginning

A day out of Rio and we’re on full swing getting as many jobs done as possible before we arrive. We have a list of jobs as long as your arm not to mention re-stocking the boat of food; cleaning materials etc.

How things change

Awesome sleep of eight hours. But upon waking I wondered if we’d turned around and headed north for a re-run of the doldrums.

So our 6am watch began with peeling the spinnakers, wooling the code 3 spinnaker with me standing in the bag stuffing it on the very confined space of the rope/ sail locker.
We went up to the code 1 spinnaker which sadly on extremely light (non-existent) wind,

So near and yet so far

Thankfully (ish) actually none of the fleet has made it to Rio yet and it’s October 5th, outside of the arrival window thanks to the doldrums episode. The leaders will probably arrive in the next day or so with us expected on the 9^th.

We still have the medium weight spinnaker flying and have just gybed to get a better run into Rio. During the night we’ll be going through