Today was the day I was to face my Nemesis! I was going on an adventure to see if I could make friends with another Hollywood blockbuster star – Jaws! I was also hoping that like his fellow thespians last night, he might be conscious that the camera puts 10 pounds on you and therefore also on a strict diet!

The mini-bus that was to take myself and other prospective 'bait' down to Gaansbai was due to arrive at 7.30am – which of course meant 7.50am in South African time. We had a long 2 hou...
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I was up bright and early eager to make the most of another day-off and to try and plan my much anticipated Shark Cage Diving adventure. Both the diving and the sharks scared the living daylights out of me but I was determined that in my year of doing things 'big and brave' I should face both of these head on and go for it! The girls and I had also booked up to go horse-riding on Noordhoek Beach later on – far more civilised and decidedly less scary so I needed to find something to keep me ...
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The sound of the wildly rattling halyards on the pin-rail by the mast should have been fair warning that today might not be the best day to venture over a thousand meters up a mountain. But neither that nor the fact that the top of this iconic rock was enshrouded in cloud was about to put me off.
We gathered at the lower cable car station at 8.30am and peered upwards. The cable car was very obviously not running due to the high wind and my fellow 'mountaineers' were equally dubious about my su...
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 Today is Saturday the start of the weekend – my first weekend in Cape Town, South Africa - and to make it perfect we have all been given the weekend off. Yippee! There is so much to see and do here but I still feel the need to ween myself away from the boat gradually. I also feel the need to have a 'normal' life day rather than a mad tourist day so I spend the morning in the yacht club, packing up my laundry to send off, catching up on emails and trying to research a few things to see and ...
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Day 18
8am and our next watch arrived and soon after the next set of “scheds”. We were firmly back in 4^th place and were 17 miles ahead of Jamaica. We did that in one push over one night. We were all thrilled but I think we were all secretly thinking - “what if we'd been sailing like that for the last 5 days” - could we have been on the podium?! We knew we just had to hang on now and keep going and we'd have 4th place – which would give us 7 points and along with the 3 points from th...
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Day 17
Today Jamaica overtook us – by 4 miles. We are so close to the finish now and to suddenly be in 5^th place after everything is untenable. My initial reaction and the one I still have hours later is – 'over my dead-body'! I know most of the rest of the crew feel the same way. We take to the helm with renewed vigour, we are minutely trimming the spinnaker. We are cross examining our course and the reasons for steering it. Everyone makes sure they understand the difference between prefe...
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Wednesday 11th – Race 3, Day 16

Today the sun came out! Today I baked my second loaf of bread ever – which we all had for breakfast. Today we have less than 48 hours to go to Cape Town and today we are still in 4th place – although we did claw a few miles back on Finland and Singapore.  Today we also hoisted our spinnaker and now we need to sail all-out to try and get on that podium. We believe we can get at least one place back and we believe we deserve it. We also want to do it for Art...
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Tuesday 10th – Race 3, Day 15

I had one of those nights last night when you think you've slept forever and wake up certain that you've over-slept and find that you've been in bed only 20 minutes.  So you go back to sleep and wake up again positive you've slept through your alarm to find it's only another 15 minutes later.  And so that went on for about 5 hours!  The reason for this is that I was Watch-leader for the day and with that came the responsibility for waking up the rest of the watc...
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Monday 9th – Race 3, Day 14

Got up at 2am for night watch to find the heavy weight spinnaker was in the saloon with another rip in it Hmmm!!  Mike B and I set about tackling the repairs. I was completely drained from 2 days of logging and editing material I'd shot of the MOB incident – which apart from being of media interest was a record of exactly what had happened and when and the time it took to get Arthur back on board. Our initial estimate of 17 minutes for the rescue did not in fact...
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Sat 7th & Sunday 8th – Race 3 Days 12 & 13

After Friday's events we could have all have done with an easier days sailing. However the wind and the sea were not concerned with our issues and continued to blow and peak and trough their hearts out.

All the crew got on with the job in hand on deck but when below decks the previous days drama was replayed and discussed with each person adding their own detail until the whole picture was clear. I don't mind admitting that I was pretty anxious about...
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Friday 6th November - Leg 2, Race 3, Day 11

I could write about many different things today; about being on mother watch with Tom, of how in these conditions it's a dangerous affair as anything that isn't tied down launches itself across the galley – including us; of how I cooked my first ever curry; of the size of the waves which have increased ten-fold since yesterday or the fact that our “Flight school” seems to have doubled in numbers – of Albatross in particular.

But today the only...
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Thurs 5th  - Race 3 Day 10 - Bonfire Night
We took the decision to drop the spinnaker and run with a poled out head sail from yesterday evening. It was a gamble as Cork are hot on our heels and Singapore not far behind them. If they run with their Heavyweight spinnaker all night they could really chase us down.
At the midnight scheds Cork had taken 9 miles from us and we were worried that by the morning they might be in the lead but by the time the midday scheds came in we were still holding th...
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Weds 4th Race 3 Day 9

Despite my grumblings about the hours, we had a great night watch last night.  We were steadily busy throughout.  The helming is getting more challenging – but it's nice to work hard for the course and we get everything ready for an early spinnaker hoist. There has been a decided lack of stars so far on our trip down from Rio, which is disappointing. Either the moon has been too bright or on most occasions it's been a cloudy night.  I still haven’t seen the Southern C...
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Tuesday 3rd   Race 3 Day 8

We did it! We crossed the scoring gate at 6.48 this morning. That's three really important points to us and proof that we are still in the lead too and just about holding off our nearest rivals Singapore and Cork. We've been trying to work out the possible placings for the overall race now, after leg 2- should we come first, second or third (obviously we're going for gold!) but the permutations are endless so we give up and hope for a nice surprise.  The good news is...
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Monday 2nd  Race 3 Day 7

We're still first this morning but Singapore have caught up four miles as have Team Finland.  It's all quite close with about 24 hours to the scoring gate.  We're still moving well and are all effectively on the same course as everyone else  (heading due east) so we should be able to get to the gate first.  We know that anything can happen though so the tension is high.
Our Albatrosses are still here – along with other small unidentifiable birds. The largest Albatros...
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Sunday 1st Race 3 Day 6
Halloween last night wasn't quite as planned. We ended up having a very busy night-watch so had no time to organise ourselves.  However Piers had conjured up some Pumpkin balloons from somewhere – with lights so they looked like lanterns and the second night-watch managed to conjure a ghoul, a ghost and a black cat. The only trick that was played by us 'spooks' was to confiscate Piers's special treat box... with a ransom note/poem left in its place saying that he woul...
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Saturday 31st Race 3 Day 5

It's the last day of October and that means Halloween tonight. One of the things that keeps us entertained on board is keeping up with the traditional holidays and events that we kept as kids and that probably have fallen by the wayside in our adult, far too busy, lives. So talk today has been of Halloween costumes (what can we possibly do with what we have... with no spare washing-up bottles, sticky-back plastic or empty loo rolls), trick or treating and pumpkins.
A ...
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Fri 30th Race 3 Day 4

My dry-bags are wonderful bolster cushions and now I'm loving my bunk! I feel more like me today. Sleep is truly a wonderful thing!  My middle is still a bit sore but I'm sure I'll live!  I suspect it's also just taken me a few days to re-adjust to being back at sea again. Just about everyone is now also over their sea-sickness, 8th place has bolstered us and we are more determined to continue to work our way up the fleet.  The watch-leaders, Tom and Mike are on the ball ...
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Thurs 29th  Race 3 Day 3

After a long day, a late finish and no sleep I started the day feeling decidedly below par. My whole body aches and I feel like I can do nothing other than be on watch and go straight to my bunk during off-watch.  I'm engineer today with Katy so we need to do the boat logs, the cleaning, the engine checks and check and pump all the bilges. I'm getting phobic about my bunk and the dampness underneath it too. Anything that falls down the gap between bunk and wall gets w...
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Wednesday 28th – Leg 2 Race 3 Day 2

Today people are still being ill – including David an experienced sailor, who tries to battle on bravely with his mother-watch, in between staggering to the heads to throw-up.  Last night was somewhat eventful with the seas still making life difficult and a bilge alarm going off in the middle of the night.  Unfortunately the bilge that had rather a large amount of water in it was directly under my bunk, so a rather testing 45 minutes followed with my hea...
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Tuesday 27th

Leg 2 – Race 3 start Day

The day arrived and so with it a covering of dull, grey cloud and only the faintest whisper of wind. My fellow round-the-worlders and I looked edgily at each other.  We'd already had one Race start with no wind – we really didn't want the anti-climax of another one. We didn't need to worry too much though.  By the time we'd been through our official send off with speeches from the great and the good from the local yacht club and Sir Robin Knox-Johnston,...
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Rio De Janeiro

23rd October

Did I say relax and enjoy Rio?  What I meant was, enjoy being on dry land.  Err, no, actually that doesn't work for today either – what I obviously meant was, enjoy not moving anywhere!
My first day proper in port was almost entirely spent on-board the yacht, sewing.  Finishing sewing the wet-weather covers for the saloon...which have now become known as 'The Bloody Saloon Cushion Covers” - (we're hoping that won't become a literal description during the race), s...
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