832nm to go!!

I have just been woken from from yet another weird dream to head up on deck for our happy hour meeting. One thing a lot of people seems to experience on
board is vivid and weird dreams! I'm not sure why? ?disturbed sleep, rocking/moving surroundings, 2.5-3hrs only at a time? Most of mine involve sailing or
clipper or my crew mates in some way although I did have one 'normal' life dream and woke up very disorientated! I also had one where I had twins?? What
does that mean? New beginnings??
The other thing that no one has escaped is waking up completely disorientated to time and in a mad panic that you have overslept for your watch or gone back
to sleep after your wake up call (which is VERY easy to do and is probably safe to say everyone has done at least once!). Some people in this mad panic
have even 'jumped' out of their bunk and frantically started trying to get ready only to be looked at strangely and told it is 2 hours before they need to
be on deck get back to bed! When we first came on board as newbie leggers we were warned about this and all thought we had gotten away with it not
affecting us until about day 3-4 when we too succumbed to it to!

Routine daily life continues on Team Finland but we can almost smell the finish line. Latest update at happy hour was that we only have 832nm to go to
Geraldton and made another 3nm on the Aussies! I never wrote about passing Uniquely Singapore and Spirit of Australia it was an exciting time, however
we're all well aware it's not over till it's over. Now that we have and have been holding our lead we're doing all we can to make sure it stays that way!!
Unfortunately we have a massive high sitting smack bang between us and Australia that we have no choice but to sail through. Sitting in the nav station
typing this blog I can see our nav computer and grib file showing light variable (from changing directions) winds. Although at the moment - touch wood -
the weather outside tells a different and much better story. We continue to have a constant wind of 17knots from the NW allowing us to make good progress
at 9-10knots along our great circle route. It has remained this way for the past 3 or more days (it's easy to lose track!) so things have been slow on deck
with a minimal number of sail changes required. Last night we finally noticed it was slightly warmer than it had been now that we have been moving steadily
further north-east.

Reading through some of my previous blog entries, I realised it may be that through some of my descriptions of life on
board, it may be difficult to realise that (or understand how) I'm having the time of my life! I guess in some ways it's kind of like running a marathon (I
imagine) There are moments that you ask yourself why the hell you're doing this to yourself. But then there are other times that you love it and go back
for more! The cold is probably what I find most difficult to deal with and I don't see it changing. The colder and more tired you are on deck the less and
less motivated you are to move, but actually that is the best cure, so it's times like these that if there is nothing else happening on deck, I'll make
myself go up to the bow to check sail trim or go on the helm (or kindly offer to go down below and put the kettle on for everyone or bake something :) All
the jobs on deck in the right (or wrong) conditions involve something that could be perceived as undesirable eg getting soaked by a bow wave on the fore
deck at 0200hrs in the morning. But working on the bow with the other foredeck guys is awesome and one of my favorite parts! Standing on the top rail of
the pulpit (frame at the front of the boat - picture 'Jack I'm flying' from titanic)looking back down the length of the boat, leaning on and clinging to the
forestay with my legs while the bow of the boat dives into a swell sending a massive wave crashing into me and almost lifting me off as I hank or unhank one
of the head sails or leaning at the full stretch of my safety line out over the side of the boat to drag in the foot of a head sail in a sail drop then
throwing my self on top of it to keep it down on the deck as 4 of us fight with the rest of the sail to bring it on board. I also love wearing the nappy
(think I've mentioned this before) - the affectionate name we have for the harness and climbing the mast for rigging checks or the spinnaker pole to 'spike'
the clew to release it for a spinnaker drop. Basically the more challenging the better that's what makes it exciting and fun.

xx