Firstly sorry there are no photos in the blog but am having trouble uploading them at the moment. Mandy will put some on for me in the next couple of days.
Well quite a different leg but the same result! Yes, we came 10th, but you all already know that as you all know more about the race than we do on the boat, I gather some of you are seriously hooked. Keep going we need all the support we can get.
Some great friends left the boat in Rio and were sadly missed, but it also meant we had fresh blood on the boat. The three of them on my watch (that's Haggis watch) were George from Norway, Dan from Italy and TT our Scottish/Ukrainian nurse from London who is part of the transplant team. I really enjoyed the first week with new people and lovely sunshine but it went a bit downhill from there! I fell victim to what the skipper called the Tartan Trots and spent 48 hours in my bunk with my head in an empty Haribo tub. I am very rarely sick but when I am I really make up for it, apparently Keith said I sounded like a wounded bear and it was enough to make everyone else feel ill. You don't get much sympathy out here, I have to say that if anyone had sent a taxi at that point I would've got in! 2,000 miles of sea in one direction, 2,000 in the other and 5 miles below is a lonely place. Anyway eventually I felt better and able to eat yet another Twix, part of the quarter of a Tonne of chocolate delivered in Rio.
The middle section of the journey brought rough seas and huge waves, very wet and cold all the time. It was blowing a force 8 one morning at 4am when a reefing line snapped with me 12 feet up the mast, Keith wrestling the wheel and Karen being knocked off her feet by waves on the deck. At the time you just get on with it but afterwards you realise just how scary it was and what could've happened. The weather systems were just all wrong and not how they are meant to be in the south Atlantic, no lovely downwind sailing with the boat flat, it was all upwind so very uncomfortable for us all. It was a real highlight to meet up with HMS Edinburgh and it lifted our spirits, quite unnerving for Gordon to suddenly see them appear on the radar steaming towards us at high speed.
The final section was ok, we made good speed towards the end but once again a bit frustrating to be 10th. In our crew meeting we had a long chat with Gordon and are encouraging him to be on deck more and improving our deck skills. This worked for a few days before he resumed his attachment to the nav station. We are working on him for the next leg! When the first boat arrives in Cape Town and you are still 500 miles away it really hurts. Mandy, Pete and Nicky arrived on the Monday and we didn't get there until Friday lunch time, I am assured they weren't sitting waiting for me though and seem to have had a good time without me. Not sure why we went into stealth mode just before we arrived, probably just to draw attention to the fact we were last!
In Cape Town we had lots of boat jobs to do, sails to mend (with Mandy's help) and recheck and repack. Nick's mum had done most of the food shopping and organised it all into bags for each day. Some of the guys took the winches to bits and serviced them and various other boat jobs so everyone was busy. That's the worst thing about coming in after everyone else, you don't have much time to prepare for the next leg and you don't really get much time off. On our one day off we managed a trip around the winelands of Stellenbosch and Franchoek which we really enjoyed and had lots of evenings out with the great food and wine of the Cape. Our accommodation was a brilliant apartment on the waterfront right opposite where we were moored and best of all it had a washer and tumble dryer, needless to say we were popular with a number of the other crew and we should all smell better at least for the start of the next leg. Unfortunately it did not have wifi as promised and so I have not had chance to reply to emails, if you sent them I HAVE read them and I love reading them so please send more and I will try my best to reply in Geraldton.
Having arrived in port looking like captain birdseye, I trimmed my beard and went to have my hair cut in the mall on the waterfront. The guy shaved my hair which was fine but then proceeded, without so much as asking, to stick a cotton bud with blue wax on it up each nostril and in each ear! He then left me sitting in the window whilst they dried........obviously this is normal practice in South Africa, Mandy wishes she'd been there with the camera. Worse was to come though when he swiftly removed them but one got stuck up my nose and took him three attempts to get out, eventually with tweezers. Will not be recommending this to hairdresser at home but will dine out on this story for years to come.
All too soon it was time to leave, I did feel quite nervous about getting back on but having spoken to everyone I think we all felt the same. However, we all thought that we wouldn't want the boat to be leaving without us on it so we must love it really! Sadly Lesley had to fly home to see her dad so missed race start and therefore this leg, we are all hoping he is ok and that she'll be there to carry on in Geraldton. At race start I was nominated to be the one standing on the front saluting the statue of a famous Cape Town sailor (sorry I don't know his name)as we passed through the swing bridges of the Victoria and Alfred dock and out to sea for the parade of sail in front of the world cup stadium and table mountain. I'm sure there are some brilliant pictures on the website as it was a really lovely day. A few of our Edinburgh supporters came out on a boat organised by Nick's mum Lucille and apparently, as we struggled manfully on, were eating canapes and drinking fizz! Shame we were only 9th over the line but there's a long way to go.
We have been told to expect storms and huge seas for the journey to Australia (didn't think they could get worse than the ones we had already seen!) but at the moment we are stuck in a wind hole going nowhere!
Thank you all for your support, the cards and emails are wonderful and give me a real boost and its lovely to know that you are all watching closely and that we haven't been forgotten. I have promised to try to do a blog more often than once a leg and I will try but it's just so exhausting on board that all I want to do when I come off shift is eat and sleep.
