Date 26 May 2005
Location 1500 miles from Boston
Weather Sunny and too still
Heading Any direction that keeps the yacht moving
I have said before, there is never a dull day at sea during the Global Challenge Race. However, I did have my reservations in this statement as we hadn't tacked or gybed for 10 days and had only changed our spinnakers as the wind strength dropped or built. The toughest job onboard was dealing with my personal roller coaster of emotions and, of course, keeping a crew of 17 hot, sticky, bored, circumnavigators happy.
The 5,100 miles sailed on this leg so far was a point at which all that changed.
We not only changed our headsail that had been hanked on the forestay all leg, to the Genoa. We also tacked and changed direction as the wind shifted.
This filled in some of the day that was mainly spent floating, going nowhere. A tedious and frustrating day, made even worse by, each polling of the fleet. Every six hours I was sure we couldn't be the only ones so unlucky with the weather and sat in a big hole of no wind just to ourselves.
Another yacht surely had to be close enough to be having similar problems. Alas, it was not to be. As I plotted the positions and measured how far each yacht had sailed in the six hours, I was distraught to learn that the beautiful sunshine with no cooling breeze was especially for us alone. So thank you on behalf of the whole crew, but please do not forget to send the wind to us as well.
In my attempt to keep our big-arsed, 45-tonne yacht moving at all costs, we tried a combination of a few sails. We had nothing to loose, clearly, as what we were doing was also having little effect. This kept us amused for about an hour, and surprisingly after two kite hoists and drops we returned to the same sail combination as we were at originally. That's sailing for you.
Even our yacht, 'Imagine it. Done.' must have been feeling frustrated at going so slow. Either that or she just wanted some more attention, so she blew a fuse and gave myself and Neil some extra work moving a pump for the water maker around, so we could continue to make water by desalination.
The good news is that we are still moving, just, in a direction. We have had to learn today that direction is second to actually moving. If you get to choose them together then you are sorted. Our direction flicked around as often as the breeze did and anything from west, through north and on to eastwards. Interesting when your destination is on a bearing of 315 degrees.
Dee Caffari/Yachting World, 27 May 2005
