About 18 miles to go and we’re still having to work hard. The wind is on the nose so we are beating towards the finish line and, with the redress time for our unscheduled stop in Porto, we are likely to win the race.
The last few days have been a blur; watches melding into a stream of living on the 45 again. Talking with Dan, it is likely that the night we held onto Mademoiselle Fifi long into the night on a rising wind, with no code 3 spinnaker to cope with the strong winds, we gained the winning edge that we have fought to keep. Other yachts may have not done so, as many of us have had to make major repairs to spinnakers. We know this as Don runs the numbers 4 times a day to assess our gains and losses.
We have had a number of hoists and drops since then, all to keep speed up. What has become clear is that maintaining speed through sail changes, sharp quick tacks, straight line accurate helming and keeping weight on the high side pays off in spades. It is easy to lose half a knot here and there, easily adding up to a few miles a day. Even just losing 2 miles a day over 34 days can mean coming in the latter part of the fleet. 68 miles might be less than the gap between first and second but, at one stage, 6 boats were within 45 miles of each other.
It’ll take a day or two to reflect, and realise we have won the first race; quite significant considering the adventures we Seadragons have had. Standing on the podium is still an incredible thought, one only dreamt of 5 weeks ago.