mad down on deck too. As we had anticipated, the wind has slowly been dropping more and more over the last few days. We weren't doing to badly, making the
most of what we had - until this morning when the wind completely died. The night before last with our spinnaker up we were even making 6.4 knots SOG
(speed over ground - often different to speed through the water due to current/drift) which was faster than the wind speed of about 5.2!! However we now
have only 2knots true wind and the ocean is like a pond (but it's an amazing blue!!). We had to drop our light weight kite (spinnaker) 3 hours ago when it
just wouldn't stay filled and currently our windseeker (big light weight head sail on the front of the boat) is flapping backwards and forwards doing very
little with us moving 0.1-0.9 knots (we're just thankful that it's forwards not backwards! Our computer is encouragingly reporting it will take us 54!!
days to get to Australia!! It's been suggested that it would be faster to swim, only we're a bit worried about sharks! - better hope we find some wind
soon!
The midlayers and foulies that we were wearing just 48 hours ago have been stripped off. Bare chested men seem to be multiplying on deck while us ladies
are remaining more conservative - possibly due to our legs not having seen a razor in 3 weeks now! Although I'm pleased to report my shorts did still fit
over my longjohns despite our diet of chocolate and carbs!! :) It's all very nice sun bathing while on watch but it's more than mildly frustrating! After
all THIS IS A RACE!!! The cause of all this? We are currently sailing right through the middle of an unavoidable massive high sitting right off the coast
of Australia, smack bang between us and Geraldton! All we can do is hope that the rest of the fleet are experiencing something similar enough for us to
hold our lead until we find some pressure again. So everyones fingers and toes crossed please!!!
We were thankful for the light winds during the night when we spent 4+ hours under emergency steering! Our wheel had come loose and the bolt to hold it on
was threaded. Luckily after a few (unusually failed) Team Finland ingenuity attempts (including hack sawing into our vang pole!) after emails back and
forward with the Clipper engineer a temporary fix has been made and we're back to using our wheel again.
The highlight of yesterdays happy hour was John, who is finishing after this leg, passing on his wind dancing expertise to the rest of the crew. I'll post
photos when we finally make it to land, it was hilarious! Another benefit is that the boat is flat!!! (even if it is rocking a bit). Life is therefore
100x easier. It's also seemed to have meant that we are sleeping more deeply, making it harder to wake up but it has meant that I'm feeling a bit revived.
Desperate for activity on deck this morning we even had a bit of a gym circuit going, the rigging of a racing yacht makes an amazing multigym funnily
enough....a bit sad I know! haha
I've sunbathed enough, been to the gym, had our last grapefruit for breakfast, written a blog and baked some biscuits – even with chocolate icing (times are
getting desperate, shockingly the kilo's and kilo's of chocolate is gone and people are almost resorting to the muesli bars!!) It's now 9 in the morning
and it's my bed time, can't afford to have too late a 'night' !! :)
Night night xx
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