Richard Hewson

LAT 53 11.4N
LONG 004 08.2E
DTF 22nm
ETA 0800 UTC 12 JULY 2012
SOG 12kts
COG 140

WEATHER WIND 284@24, Sea Rough, Swell W 2m, Sky (blue) 5/8 Cl, Baro 1007

It has been a painfully frustrating 24 hours for Gold Coast Australia playing catch up on Singapore and Visit Finland as we race towards the finish in Denhelder. At the time of writing we are having a fantastic sail with the heavy weight spinnaker flying in 25-30kts of wind surfing down waves as we weave our way through the oil rigs at 12kts and observe the first sunrise we have seen since the start of the race.

The day started becalmed in a wind hole and watching Singapore and Visit Finland disappear over the horizon. Once out of the hole we utilised every recourse to navigate our way through the squalls and calm patches, gaining the occasional glimpse of Visit Finland on AIS always just out of our reach and constantly pulling away.

Late afternoon as we entered Dogger Bank the wind finally began to swing to the west and increase in strength we changed from the light weight to the medium weight spinnaker, caught sight of Visit Finland again and finally began to make up ground. The team have been working very hard, and everybody is exhausted from the constant sail changes and mid watch wake ups as we hoist and lower spinnakers and yankees. Added to this the dreaded “Channels” a condition suffered by seafares on their way home after a big trip where you can not sleep due to the excitement of things to come on land. A few crew I even skipped from watches throughout the day as their level of fatigue was noticed to be too high to concentrate on the task at hand. A few extra hours of sleep and the crew are all throthing at the bit to get to Denhelder as soon as possible, and even at this very late stage of the race (at the time of writing) there is still a chance we can catch one of the leading boats.

Powernaps are the source of my sleep as skipper, as a proper 6 hours sleep is not an option when there are squalls, wind holes, sail changes, oil rigs, shipping and traffic separation schemes to deal with. As instructed the crew are told to wake me up for any of the above reasons in my daily and standing orders. It is amazing how refreshed one can feel after not sleeping for a day and then getting a couple of hours sleep in to boost the sleep bank. Infact if this blog makes no sence to its readers its because I have not had much sleep in the last 72 hours at all.

At the time of writing we have just crossed through all three of the Traffic Separation Schemes outside Denhelder and weaved our way through a number of oil rigs and shipping traffic. We were making some fantastic ground on the leading boats throughout the night, but lost miles gained when a fleet of Seismic Research Vessels cut us off (No offence Pat, but your brethren cost us the race). We were forced to sail around the 4nm exclusion zone that the vessels had in place to get around their towed acoustic arrays, this put an extra 4nm between us and the lead boats, and now we are pushing hard to make it all back up.

All in all it has been a fantastically competitive and challenging race. The team have worked incredibly hard under the brilliant leadership of our two watch leaders Lisa Blair and Annelise Nelson. Tactically we sailed the race very well, and if it were not for the wind hole that we were stuck in for hours as the other yachts sailed past we would have had a fantastic chance of being the first yacht into Denhelder – This is yacht racing, some things you just can not predict. Congratulations should be given to Singapore skipper Ben Bowley and his crew for sailing a fantastic race.