Thursday 6th November
Position 30'22.536S 24'18.928W
Wind 49 deg 20.4 knots
COG 136 deg. SOG 11.6 knots
Distance Covered 4,955 Nautical Miles
All is well on the good ship Mowgli and we continue our slow but steady progress towards Cape Town. Wind is pretty constant at around 20 - 22 knots coming from around 50 degrees. We are still on a reach, so sailing at about 90 degrees to the true wind angle. This doesn't make for the most comfortable sailing with the boat crashing into the waves in front sending water streaming down and over the decks. Life down below is much harder as you always need to have one hand holding on to something firm to stop you falling - makes doing ordinary things takes three times as long.
Amazingly, the close battle between us and the Chileans on board Desafio Cabo de Hornas continues with our positions on the leaderboard swapping two or three times per day - at the last report they were just 3 miles ahead of us, Mowgli having been ahead for most of the day. We are both closing ground on Michel aboard Roaring Forty and he is now just 20 miles ahead on a Distance to Finish basis. We have also clawed back about 150 miles from the Germans over the last day or two cutting their lead over us to about 400 miles. Neither David or I can remember watching any long distance ocean sailing race which has been as close run as this for so long. We hope we are providing sufficient entertainment value!
According to our latest weather routing we have about 2,350 miles to sail in order to reach Cape Town with an estimated arrival date of around 17-18th November, some three or four days earlier than originally expected. So, another 12 days perhaps and we'll be there. Can't wait!!
Missing you all loads.
Love
David and Jeremy
Wednesday 5th November
Position 27'06.607S 27'17.143W
Wind 75 Deg 2.13 knots
COG 145 deg SOG 9.6 knots
Distance Covered 4,717 Miles
Weather, Damn Weather! There seems to be lots of it down here and it can't make its bleedin' mind up what to throw at us next! To be fair, we have had pretty constant winds since my email yesterday and have had some great sailing with boat speeds of nearly 17 knots with wind gusting up to about 25 and pretty constantly over 20 knots. The problem is knowing what it is going to do over the next week or two as we make our approach to Cape Town and therefore what routing we should take to get there. Each forecast we receive seems so substantially different from the previous one that it is making our routing decisions difficult.
One thing is for sure though that this race is very far from over and it will be very interesting to see where each of us go and how the positions switch back and forth over the next few days!
Everything is well on board although much tougher as we head more to windward - the sea is rough and the boat is bouncing and slamming into e waves a lot. The new main sail doesn't have any drain holes in it and collects water in the reefed part of the sail requiring emptying every three hours - a cold a and wet task!.
Love o all.
Jeremy and David
Tuesday 4th November
Position 23'30.461S 29'22.804W
Wind 50 Deg. 17.8 knots
COG 150 deg. SOG 12.0 knots
Distance Covered 4474 Miles. Approx distance to sail 3,150 Miles
Well, we have finally found real wind at last and are now trucking along at 11 - 12+ knots (top speed today 14.55 knots) in 16+ knots of wind. We have a low pressure system in front of us and if we are lucky we should be able to hitch a ride pretty much all the way to Cape Town - although it still means going a long, long way south in order to get round the stationery high pressure system in the middle of the Atlantic. The cat and mouse game with the red hot chile peppers has continued for the last 24 hours with each of us holding second position on a number of occasions. If it has been exciting for our supporters, it has been the life-blood of our daily routine here on Mowgli!
The boat position reports are sent to us by email every three hours and whoever is on watch times his activities to ensure we get the report without any delay. We then calculate the differences in distance to finish between each of the boats to see where the gains and losses have been and also plot the positions of each boat on our Maxsea navigation software programme. For us, it is often more about the north/south and east/west gains and boat direction than it is about the actual distance to finish on the theoretical straight line basis.
We had a COWK today (Close Encounter of the Whale Kind). (23'09.254S 29'32.734W for those interested!) David was helming at about 3pm this afternoon when there was an enormous splash just about 10 feet off our port bow and David saw a large grey dorsal fin disappearing beneath the waves. We were travelling at a little over 11 knots at the time and any collision could have been disastrous for both parties involved! I guess we are that close to disaster all the time as we charge through the ocean waves - not much we can do about it but pray and keep our fingers crossed! We are not sure what sort of whale it was but wonder if anyone can tell us what sort of whale has a floppy dorsal fin?
Finally we have found a day pack of food that contains a pudding - Hooray!! Strawberry Cream Cheese - just add cold water (and some crumbled Maryland Cookies!). I did suggest holding it back for David's birthday on the 9th just in case we don't find another one but we have decided to eat it anyway! Better be good after a choice of vegetarian tikka curry or game casserole!
Love to all.
Jeremy and David
Sunday 2nd November
Position 18'08.006S 31'24.536W
Wind 186 deg. 4.5 knots
COG 124 deg 4.8 knots
Distance Covered 4,114 Miles. distance to Finish (straight line) 3,196 Miles
We have had another extremely frustrating 24 hours of light winds and have only covered a distance over the ground of 44 miles since my email yesterday. Our course has been much more easterly than we would have liked - but it's better than westerly or northerly! It has been doubly frustrating in the fact that the Chileans, only some 20 -30 miles to our north east appear to have been enjoying very much better winds than ourselves. In most of the 3-hourly reports over the last 24 hours, their boat speed has been reported at a level significantly higher than our wind speed!! No wonder they have sneaked into second place once more.
We are still the most southerly boat but only just. We are also now very nearly as far south as Michelle on Roaring Forty although he is quite some distance to our east. Boris and Felix on Beluga Racer continue to enjoy stronger winds on the edge of the low pressure system taking them off to the south east at three times our boat speed.
We had an amazing crossing of the Doldrums and managed to gain huge mileage on the leaders then and this is perhaps our just desserts for that - and we should be grateful that the mileage losses are very small by comparison at this stage. Our spirits are holding up well and we are looking forward to the next stage. The race still has a long long way to go!
On a brighter note, in one of the lulls of wind this morning after having spent twenty, sweaty, minutes folded up in the cramped lazarette (the small compartment at the very back of the boat housing the rudder gear etc.) transferring fuel from our spare jerry cans to the main tank by way of a small hand pump, Jeremy went for a swim! The boat was moving at slightly less than one knot and there was hardly a breathe of wind and I thought, Why not? We streamed a spare sheet off the back of the boat for me to catch if required and I dived off the bow into the clear blue and very warm water. Quite strange swimming in about 4,500 metres of water some 500 miles offshore! One knot of boat speed is also a lot faster than you think when you are swimming for it! I have attached a couple of images cut out of the video footage which is sadly too large to send.
Hope all is well back home.
Love to all.
Jeremy and David