In fact we were somewhere near 26′ 04’60 Lat 127′ 48′ 20 Long
Ah my diary, I greet you with but more of the same news…..even less wind, precisely 0.00 knots of it for a large portion of the watch and it looks now as if we will not make the Sun Palace Hotel 
with balconies of overflowing greenery, not dissimilar to the Hanging Gardens of Babylon, tonight (Ho Hum).
Plymouth Clipper are behind us. We had a fisherman come and talk to us which was amusing, trying to converse in the middle of nowhere when no body could speak a word of the other person’s language.
Around 06.30hrs the wind woke up and we moved headsails from Windseeker (gossamer thin) to LWT (Lightweight) Spinnaker to No 1 in about 15 minutes smoothly and efficiently and got no compliant from our skipper 10/10.
Realistic finish will be late afternoon today.
Following snoozing during my offwatch, I woke to find the our good yacht Portsmouth Clipper inshore, Plymouth offshore, Genoa (Genny)up, and had overhauled us by 6 miles (Marvellous!). A quick discussion ensued as we came on watch (1400hrs – 2000hrs afternoon watch) as to the merits of getting our Genny up, as all bar one of the previous attempts had produced zip success, we decided to go for it.
For the non sailors reading this, please ignore the next paragraph as it will read as if it is a foreign language and will probably make little sense.
The plan was to tack, drop the headsail, raise the windeseeker, and genny, with the genny on the outside and then drop the windseeker, resulting in one head sail up being the genny. Due to the increase in wind, we scrapped that and went for the straight hoist which went well. Had the Genny up for half an hour, not particularly well trimmed, and then dumped it, amidst much gnashing and castigation from OBS (our beloved skipper).
Maintained our 4th position throughout the watch with the 3 boats behind slowly catching up, but not sufficient to cause too much stress.
Night Watch 1 (2000 – 0001hrs 17 March 2001)
Woke to find we were motoring, and had finished 4th a mediocre result, and prepping for docking. After waiting for confirmation of the results, they were:
Portsmouth 4th
London 5th
Glasgow 6th
Bristol 7th
with a time gap between us and Bristol being 75 seconds, over a race of 6.4 days and 1094 nautical miles, really rather close.
The usual party followed when we docked as it always feels as if we finish races on a Friday night, irrespective of the actual day and time, on this occasion it was early saturday morning, so pretty close then!
© Wil Suthers 2011
