Message From nicole

145 miles to go in our last ocean crossing, & then we round the Fastnet rock &head up the Irish sea to Cork. Sadly the North Atlantic doesn't seem to possess any sunshine, just lots of drizzle (that may explain the UK weather) but the wind has come nicely behind us now & e are roaring along -hitting the heady hights of 18 knots now & again as we surf down the waves. Hull and Humber are close behind, & it looks like it will be very close all the way in....

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Message From nicole

Over halfway across the Atlantic. After the becalming, we had some gnarly weather for a while- lots of wind on the nose, &some crazy waves that made steering interesting -with the cold, it made life on board quite tough. Things have improved now. The wind has come around &the kite is up; the warmth of the Gulf stream has kicked in. We have been dueling hard with New York who are only a few miles back. Lots of wildlife around, & I nearly ran over a whale...<

Message From nicole

The last big race has begun...It was all a bit odd before we started. Everyone was a little apprehensive; the leggers because it was their first ocean crossing, & us, I think, because it was the last. We got off to a cracking start - tacking up the estuary, with the Lady Qing out in front, avoiding all of the chaos behind. But once out at sea the wind dropped, &as we hit the Grand Banks the fog rolled in; & here we are again flopping around in the fog...

TV show

If you fancy watching a bit of yachting, they have made a tv series about our race, which should be coming to sky sports soon. xx

In the middle of nowhere

An interesting trip up to Sydney... It was a non-race, to the middle of nowhere, 40 knots on the nose.... what was that all about? We just wanted a nice little trip, but no; a shit load of wind, freezing cold and icy water. Then we had to sail slalom style to get into Sydney harbour, so that we could avoid all the lobster pots. Luckily Marcus took over the helm at that point, as my skills aren't really up to that.... So I am not overly excited about the trip across the Atlantic. Am feeling that it may be a bit of a grind - cold and wet, and apparently there are 17 icebergs near where we are going??? It is also the last ocean, so a little sad too. But I have now bought a key piece of kit - some marigolds .... (dry hands, and hopefully warm ones!).
Canada has been nice though. V friendly people, though nasty old weather.

Canada...

So here we are in Canada - it is a little cold, but nice. Just watched a truely shocking movie.... The end of the race was quite exciting. Hull and Humber overtook us, and then we took them, and finished 0.2 miles ahead, or something very small like that. (Or so i was told, as I was actually sleeping at the time....) So that was cool, we got a blue flag (third place), but everyone is very keen to get a yellow flag (1st) - they can be quite elusive...

Message From nicole

We were supposed to do a photo shoot as we left New York in front of the Statue of Liberty; But sadly it was so foggy that we couldn't actually see the Statue, & that has been the story pretty much since. The start was farsical as 10 boats tried to race in little wind. Spinnakers went up & straight back down again. Boats pointed all over the place, to try & get some wind and clean air, & I had no idea whether we were one of the ones pointing in the right direction or not!The fog has rolled in & out constantly since - sometimes you could only see a few hundred yards ahead & we crossed our fingers & hoped that the radar was working! At one point an orange blob loomed towards us - a large tanker? in the end just Hull and Humber, but perhaps a lucky escape. & the fog makes it cold - really cold. We got pretty excited this morning as the sun appeared, but it was a brief appearance until the fog came back.

Message From nicole

The race was stopped early again due to lack of wind, and we were not overly impressed. After leading most of the race we had slipped back during the flopping around stage & wanted to race to the end. It wasn't to be though, so we fought hard for the last 12 hours to get the best place that we could (4th in the end - respectable, but not that yellow flag that we so wanted). Sadly there has been a tonne of wind since... & a crazy lightening storm as well.