Some 8 days ago (?), I seem to have lost count of them, we have passed
the equator and were visted by King Neptune who had to grant us
permission to travel through his kingdom. He was in rather good spirits
and after drinking his nectar and showing our worthyness we were all
allowed to pass and continue on our way to Rio. The white sails we had
put up in de Doldrums soon made way for the spinaker again and the days
passed in a rather boring fashion. When we came closer to the Brazilian
coast things started to get more exiting. The weather forecast for the
last days towards the finish showed light airs and we were already in
them. Our competition was eating away on our lead and we all got a bit
nervous: is 120 miles lead enough? How can we make sure they will not
overtake us in the last days or even hours. All this exitement made for
some interesting team dynamics gossip sessions, grumpyness etc. All of
which disappeared when we were increasing our lead again...
For two days now we have been experiencing lots of action. Yesterday we
nearly lost our spinaker block from the top of the mast, this happened
as we were in our happy hour celebrating a birthday with a nice lunch.
Ditch the lunch, spinaker down, repack it, fix the block and up with the
sail again. It is becoming more and more normal now all these emergency
spi drops and hoists. To top it all up while we were sorting the sail
out we were treated to a fantastic display of jumping right whales: big
ones, babies, close by and far away it was absolutely magnificent to
watch! I cannot wait until we start leg 2 and we will see more of them!
Ever since the whale show things have been changing constantly. The wind
has changed direction by tens of degrees every hour almost,we had rain,
lightning, the windspeed has gone up and down and we were in very light
airs for what seemed ages. Plenty of fiddleing around with sail
positions and configurations. We have had 4 sail changes last night and
this morning we tacked, hoisted the spinaker and gybed within 4 hours
just to stay on course to the finish line: crazy but fun ;-)! Contrary
to what our GRIB-files (grid with windspeeds and directions that is laid
over our chart, all digital of course) indicate we are currently flying
towards the finish line with 9 knots. Let's hope the GRIB-file is wrong
all the way and we can keep this wind all the way to the finish
line (which is now at Cabo Frio and not Rio anymore). 140 miles
to go... let's hope we are there first. From the finish it is another 70
miles to Rio, but that we can do in a straight line under engine
(provided our gearbox does not fail us).
