Message From nicole

A slightly random race this time. We went from snow and anchoring, to surfing down the waves at 25 knots, to beating into the wind for the last few days. We've had a long list of breakages & repairs, from the generator, watermaker & instruments down below, to sails, poles, & lines up on deck. We even had two small fires- it was a bit of shock when the cable for the sewing machine burst into flames as I was using it! We are quite disappointed that the race was ended when we were in our worst position in days & in a great position for when the wind changed direction. But I guess that is the way yacht racing goes -some bad luck can make a big difference. Now we are crusing gently towards Hawaii, ensuring that there is no undue stress on the mast. We are not yet sure when the race will restart as they have to build a second new mast. But getting stuck in Hawaii for a few extra days can hardly be a bad thing! xx

Message From nicole

Another boat has just lost its mast & the race has been ended to prevent any further incidents. all are well on the boat concerned. We are all quite gutted that the race has been ended early. We had just slipped to 5th but were in a good position, & had our sights set on a podium position. Now all of our efforts have come to nothing. & after a tough day pumping out the bilges, as when we woke this morning the sleeping area was practically underwater!

Message From nicole

Today is Monday 10th March (I think). And yesterday was Monday 10th March. It is all a little confusing. Last night at 2am, we crossed the international dateline and crossed from Eastings to Westings ie we are now West of the Greenwich Meridian rather than East and 12 hours behind UK time instead of 12 hours ahead. Sods law would have it that last night was my only full nights sleep in the last 11 days, but I was dragged from my bed to celebate with champagne, crisps, sour mix and silly hats. We are now more than halfway around the world in terms of longtitude (as well as mileage and days which we passed a while back), which is a good feeling. and tomorrow we should break the 1000nm to go to Hawaii. Its is an odd race, as the fleet is still close together and 3000nm in, it is strange to see another clipper cross behind you only a few hundred meters away.Usually we don't see another after the first 12 hours!

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Message From nicole

i've been learning some new skills recently, as we had a trashed kite (spinnaker) to fix and our usual sewer has left the boat. So as well as learning how to patch up and sew the kite back together, I am now highly skilled at fixing sewing machines made circa 1910! And so many different ways in which they can stop working, for no apparent reason. I'll be crossing my fingers the first time it goes up. Other than that, we continue across a very large ocean

Message From nicole

Sorry for the lack of blogs recently but things have been a little crazy recently. After a few days of surfing down the waves at 20 knots (my own top speed is 21.4 which is actually a bit scary) things have gone a bit mad with things breaking all over the place. Our spinnaker pole has 3 lines on it to hold it in place. Yesterday one line came off which we managed to fix by someone shimmying up another line to reattach it. Then about 20 mins later one of the other lines snapped, which sent the spinnaker flying all over the place and it wrapped around the inner forestay so badly that it took more than an hour to untwist. It also lost us two places in the race, which is pretty soul destroying as we have been all working really hard and are all suffering from sleep deprivation. Anyway, still 2500 miles to go, so plenty of time to catch those boats that snuck past.... xx