Thursday 15th December, 1900 GMT
I have been quiet for a couple of days as I used to hate reading during previous Volvo's that I hadn't participated in from Skippers or Navigators who were going on about " why us...."", or the "its's just not fair.." bleat that really nobody cares about except those that have written it. Anyway, that was me, I basically had to go no comms otherwise it would have come out like that for sure!
What I am talking about is our little Day Two debacle where one minute we are jockeying at the front of the pack to then be utterly nailed by this cloud which let the whole rest of the fleet either sail away or in Telefonica's case, sail from ten miles behind us to straight past, while we did donuts round and round just going nowhere in our own little weather whirlpool.
SO, it has taken me and, more importantly us aboard the mighty Sanya Lan, to recover. The problem when you have a bad day, is that it is a vicious circle that you spin into. The sleep routine works well, short intense sessions for the guys of four hours on deck followed by four hours below, but for any sail change or manoeuver of any kind, it's all up and into it. So what happens is that when guys start missing two or three of their 'off watches' they very quickly get over-tired. To counter this after a heinous session, often you as a Skipper try and start to minimise sail changes, tacks and gybes for at least 12 hour afterwards to try and get somewhat back on track. This is of course where the double hit comes in, now not only have you lost the miles with the big cloud or the breakdown or whatever it is that stopped your progress, but now you are paying the price for lowering the intensity at which you race the boat. The downside though if you don't get your guys back in shape, is that this cycle can last for days on end if you don't invest some time and sadly give up some miles.
So that was the story of our third day at sea. Firstly we got totally raked over position wise, then we got beaten to death for six hours trying to get out of it, followed by a heinous night of sailing in incredibly changeable conditions and thrown on top of that having to cross the Aghalus current running downwind in 30+ knots, all in all pretty taxing......But we are back!!
A couple of great days sailing and thanks to a cold front that has positioned itself in front of the leaders we have managed to get back into the game. The boat is 100% and the guys are fully charged and enjoying life on board. Tactically speaking there is a big decision to make, do we take the more traditional route and push East into the high pressure or go with what the weather router wants us to do and head North? For sure the fleet are herding themselves towards the more Easterly traditional route, but there is a potential race winning move on the cards for someone. It's highly likely to be a winning or a last place move though so requires a little more homework right now.
On a different note I have been thinking of things that we could do to improve our Chinese culture on board. My latest idea is to try and do the whole next leg with only chop sticks for eating!! Now that would be even more of a challenge eating freeze dried with chop sticks then our Lions Head run was in Cape Town I reckon!!!
Talk soon
Cheers
Mike and the Boys from Sanya.
