Next Stop Uruguay!
Hi Everyone! Sorry to be MIA. It’s been nonstop since we left London and today we start the next race to Uruguay. The first week of racing was pretty tough. We were upwind for the first 48 hours and I completely underestimated how difficult life on a 45 degree angle would be. We work in a 3 watch system. I’m on deck from 12am-4am, then sleep from 4am-12pm, on deck from 12pm-4pm, cook dinner from 4pm-8pm and then rest from 8pm-12am before starting rhe cycle over. Other watches have similar schedules but they are assigned breakfast, lunch or cleaning duties. I’m on dinner duty for all of Leg 1, so Steve is pretty psyched. I won’t just come back a sailor, but a Chef! Luckily I’ve got Fred from Sweden, in the galley with me and not only is he a foodie but he also doesn’t get seasick! To all of you who asked me if I get seasick, I can now say the answer is yes, but luckily only when below deck. On deck I’m fine!
After the first 2 days of diffucult upwind sailing out of the English channel, we had a day of beautiful “champagne” sailing downwind. Fred, Chris and I made Chicken Tangine and apricot crumble as a nice celebratory dinner for the crew. With downwind sailing the boat rolls around more from side to side but you don’t have to live at such a steep angle. After our day of easy sailing, the winds picked up to 40 knots (see video on Instagram) and it was another tough 48 hours of trying to keep the boat from broaching (when you lose control of the boat, you tip sideways and the boom goes in the water). We had it happen 6x but luckily I wasn’t on deck for any of them. Not nearly as scary when you are below deck and in truth not as terrible as it sounds. On deck you loosen a few lines and the boat rights itself. The boats are very secure. There are times when we are so heeled over that I have to hold on to make sure I don’t fall to the other side, but I’m not scared. Even with the low edge of the deck cutting through the water, we feel secure.
After our 2 days of high winds and large waves in the bay of biscay, we started to round the coast of Portugal and the wind died. We luckily finished 5th when we arrived at 5am on Monday but it could have easily been 3rd or 9th. The wind died, the boats all caught up to each other and then it was all down to a bit of luck about who got a better breeze and who had the best people to helm in light winds. Luckily this is a strength of ours! Su (my bunk buddy who I alternate sleeping with) is amazing on the helm in both 40knots and 1knot. So that’s about it for race 1.
We also lost 1 day of racing bc our spinnaker got wrapped around our inner forestay. We were still sailing but not with our fastest sail. It all happened when I was asleep so I can’t speak to the drama but the 18 people who weren’t sleeping did a great job fixing it. Fingers crossed it doesn’t happen again on our way to Punta.
So today we start race 2. It’s 1 race but we are thinking of it in 3 parts: race to the scoring gate off of Africa (if you can’t see us on the race tracker it’s bc we are in stealth mode hiding ourselves from the other boats for 24hrs), then a race to the Doldrums (notorious area of no wind near the equator) where it is very hot and we are allowed to use our motor but only for a max of 6 degrees of latitude and it costs us 60 hours of time. They instituted the motor policy after 1 boat was stuck with no wind for 9 days a few years ago, in that heat it gets dangerous and this way there is a better chance of all boats arriving during the arrival window (Oct 12-16). Hopefully we’re on the early side of that before everyone else! After the Doldrums it’s a race to Punta! There is an Ocean Sprint on the way and if we stay on the rhumb line (shortest path between portimao and punta) we pass the ocean sprint latitudes on an angle. If we chose to stray from the rhumb line, we can cut through the latitudes perpendicularly (ie shorter) and maybe gain some ocean sprint points. Check out the race viewer to see what we do!
In terms of concerns, Seumas is mostly worried about squalls. They come put of nowhere and can destroy our fast sails. They usually appear at dawn and dusk and look like big grey clouds. If we even think we see one on the horizon, we’ll drop our fast lightweight sails, hoist our medium sails and wait it out. Our number one goal (besides winning) is to take care of our sails! They are our gears!
I’ll try to send updates from the boat but it’s basically a nonstop sleep, eat, sail schedule. Thank you for all your support! Follow the Instagram and Facebook links on my media page to see more from the race. Big hugs to everyone! Atlantic Ocean here I come! Love to you all!
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