Race 1 - Day 6 Crew Diary - London, UK to Rio de Janeiro, Brazil 06 September

Today has been a very mixed one, we vey briefly hit a new Mission Performance speed record of 30.2 knots (something swiftly rewarded with a wave over the head for american Mike who was driving) during happy hour and in the same 10 minutes learnt of the loss of one of our clipper family. Our hearts are with you IchorCoal and I hope that you find the strength to carry on. We all want to see you back on on the course when this tragedy has passed whether we have met you or not we are all crew and Mission Performance are pulling for you.

But onto more happy thoughts, my mother watch is over for this week, the irony of swapping Day 2 Mother (calm sailing) because i get seasick for day 5 (the worst day yet) was not lost on me. Trying to cook for 22 people in a hot airless galley, when things keep throwing themselves at you is an intresting experience. I will admit to a moment when I thought, nope, I am not doing this for a year, Rio sounds a lovely place to spend the next 10 months, but today I am back on deck, the sun is shining and we are slowly climbing up the fleet. The Race Viewer showed us eleventh from a few days ago had put but of a damper on things but we are hard at it and are slowly gaining on the leaders. We got Qingdao today but ClipperTelemed got us, now we are both after Derry~Londonderry~Doire, it is shaping up to be hard fought race regardless of where we stand.
Today is also a good day because we are on good tack for sleeping, only an offshore sailor in this kind of boat can tell you of the pure joy of finding the boat is running on a tack which doesn't mean you trust your life to the very small leacloth (my bunk buddy has installed a sail tie seatbelt on our bunk which I may try on on rougher nights!) or even better is runnnig flat so you can let your bunk down a bit and don't have to sleep with a dry bag stopping you getting wedged in your cubby. Its the small things that make this race and the contented snuffling sighs coming from James coffin bunk this morning and the glee with which he lept into it shouting 'we're on a good tack' will keep me smiling for days.