Friday 21 November 2008 10:13 GMT
Green Dragon – Ian Walker (Skipper)
We have now entered one of those quiet periods of the race, where nothing too much is happening. Everyone is charging along on a reach at 20 knots but not on the edge, as you would be downwind with a spinnaker.
For those watching at home it is a period where it shouldn’t be necessary to check the website every 3 hours. Of course, some boats will gain a few miles and some will lose a few – particularly if they change sails – and there is always a risk of something failing, but in general not much will change compared with either windy or very light and shifty weather.
On board the Green Dragon, we are enjoying crossing off the miles without any dramas and trying to save ourselves for the challenges ahead. On deck, it is very wet as we are hard reaching with jib top and full main but no longer very cold and not yet too hot.
We are able to sail with three on deck and no standby, so everyone is recharging their batteries. What is very pleasing is that we have been able to set the mainsail up quite well without a boom and we can now reef well too. We are sailing at very close to 100% and conversation has changed from how we are going to get to India in time for the start of the next leg, to perhaps being able to beat some boats into Cochin. We are after all in fourth after sailing for 4 days without a boom so who knows.
What will be absolutely crucial is avoiding any upwind sailing so this will strongly affect our tactics. So far, my race predictions have been good and I predict some wildly varying strategies for the last 1000 miles of this race. Every forecast we get is presenting us with a very different optimal route to Cochin and some vary by as much as 1000 miles apart. This is good news from our perspective, as the last thing we want in our current state is a drag race.
One thing that is getting very strange onboard is that ship’s time for us is UTC to stay in sync with the race office position reports and weather downloads. As we have been effectively racing due east, we are losing time fast and our clock was 2 hours late relative to local time leaving Cape Town is now 5 hours late relative to local time. That means it is getting light at midnight and dark at three in the afternoon.
Yesterday I was eating dinner as the sun was coming up and it wasn’t because I had just got in from the pub. This really messes with your mind so we have decided to slip our mealtimes a few hours to try to compensate. For us, lunch is now cooked at 9am and dinner will be at 3pm. You can of course eat it when you want as it sits in the thermos pot ready for you to serve yourself. Other than that, the only thing to report is that ‘man flu’ has firmly got a grip of most of us now, which is not entirely surprising as we share sleeping bags, bowls, spoons etc. As long as that remains the worst ailment that comes onboard during this race, I will be a happy man.
Received 10:13 GMT