Rio to Cape Town – Leg 2, Race 3 – 9th Nov
November 11, 2009
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 do us justice. The evidence from the camera confirmed that it took 11minutes and 36 seconds to complete the rescue from the first shout of “Man-overboard”.
We'd not being working on the spinnaker for more than an hour and a half when the boat started to pitch and roll more wildly than it had before. The wind had changed, a squall came in and we all spent the next 3 hours putting in reef after reef and changing down from the Yankee 2 to Yankee 3 head sail – all in extremely wet, windy and wild conditions. By the end of watch we were all physically exhausted and very ready for breakfast and bed. We'd gone into stealth mode from 6am as we were hoping to make some good ground over the next 24 hours and we joked that stealth mode now meant very small sails so no-one would spot us!
We are now in 4th place – Team Finland are ahead of us by one mile. We're catching Singapore very gradually but Cork are pulling away in first place. We're trying to give it our all and race hard but I think we are all very slightly still in shock after our MOB, everyone is tired and the constantly bouncing boat makes everything ten times harder. I'm covered in bruises from the knocks and bangs just from moving around the boat - but you just keep going. We can now see the coast of South Africa on our electronic charts and are now about 750 nms away. We need to all try and have one big push to get there as fast and as safely as possible.
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 do us justice. The evidence from the camera confirmed that it took 11minutes and 36 seconds to complete the rescue from the first shout of “Man-overboard”.
We'd not being working on the spinnaker for more than an hour and a half when the boat started to pitch and roll more wildly than it had before. The wind had changed, a squall came in and we all spent the next 3 hours putting in reef after reef and changing down from the Yankee 2 to Yankee 3 head sail – all in extremely wet, windy and wild conditions. By the end of watch we were all physically exhausted and very ready for breakfast and bed. We'd gone into stealth mode from 6am as we were hoping to make some good ground over the next 24 hours and we joked that stealth mode now meant very small sails so no-one would spot us!
We are now in 4th place – Team Finland are ahead of us by one mile. We're catching Singapore very gradually but Cork are pulling away in first place. We're trying to give it our all and race hard but I think we are all very slightly still in shock after our MOB, everyone is tired and the constantly bouncing boat makes everything ten times harder. I'm covered in bruises from the knocks and bangs just from moving around the boat - but you just keep going. We can now see the coast of South Africa on our electronic charts and are now about 750 nms away. We need to all try and have one big push to get there as fast and as safely as possible.
Posted by Della Parsons.
