The margin was 17 minutes after racing for 15 days, or around 3 miles having travelled about 3,500 miles. But we won and we’re delighted. Our win in leg 1 wasn’t understood or accepted by many; the vagaries of racing rules and redress, but a head to head race is a different kettle of fish.

One of the many things we learned from Dan was the need to keep sails full and trimmed. Changing a headsail or spinnaker, or taking in/shaking out a reef can reduce your speed by a couple of knots. In fact we did a spinnaker hoist which was immediately tripped and we had to take it down – don’t know why that happened, but that cost us around 5 miles as we had to repair the spinnaker before re-hoisting it. Once more and the result would be different. but that’s the fun of racing as it’s happening to all of us and it’s only when you have someone on your shoulder, only a few miles away, for hours, that you get a sense of the closeness of these yachts. Truly one design, and with equal crews, it’s how you approach the race that makes a difference.

Have you heard of Gough Island? It’s the only piece of land on our great circle route from South America to South Africa. The law of attraction is a powerful law and yes, we found ourselves heading straight for it at one stage. It prompted skipper Andy to pop up on deck and shout “if. You don’t steer 105 degrees now, we’ll hit the %#^?€< island! In the end we skirted round it – just. Look at the race viewer and you’ll see our track. Quite amusing in retrospect.

But what a race! Andy didn’t have a chance to sail with any of us before race start, and we didn’t know him, but in true Greenings style, we just did what was asked. The inshore race was really exciting, followed by some quite heavy winds. The latter part of the race was such a contrast as we found a wind hole so our speed was dictated by the speed of the weather system that filled in the wind. We flew our code 2 and really had to concentrate as we could build apparent wind speeds faster that the true wind, by powering up and catching the odd surf, so could sail faster that the wind! Cool!

It’s Sunday now, two days to race start, and sitting at a beach restaurant amongst Cape Townians enjoying the weekend. As I type, Greenings is sailing past with the new Leg 3 crew on their familiarisation sail :). What a contrast, and not just with living on and racing a yacht. It’s a beautiful part of the world, but such a contrast amongst those who live here.

Landfall is always exciting and I had been looking forward to sailing into Cape Town. Table mountain was quite a sight from 50 miles out, though darkness has fallen by the time we arrived. The biggest surprise I had was having a large grey shark appear alongside Polly and turn away in our wash and swim off. Sailing yesterday on a corporate day with our sponsors meant a day sailing in and around Table Bay which was stunning. Loads of seals mooching around on their backs, flippers in the air and chilling, as well as a whale surfacing and then diving away 50 metres off our beam. We have seen so much amazing wildlife.

Sunshine and a good wind yesterday, and we hope the weather forecast improves for race start in Tuesday when we finally head for the Southern Ocean. There we expect big seas, winds and a lot more surfing. We’ll see . . .

Jeremy xx