Day 13 - Turning the corner

So at last we start to head towards the setting sun.  It's about time. Although we do put in the occasional gybe north, a lot of headway has been made westwards.  This is much to the relief of the crew, because there is not much that can dampen your spirits more (apart from cleaning the bilges) than heading away from your final destination. 

Despite the light wind, it was a very eventful day on board.  We fixed the engine (we had an air bubble in the fuel line), set up the shade cloths and rewired the desalinator.  The only job that remains is to start climbing back up the leader board. 

Steve Meek - the sun protectors that you made us for the 2011 race are still going strong.  Can’t thank you enough. 

Everyone has had a chance to helm, and every person has their own style of helming.  Dad steers the straightest course.  No beating round the bush. I, on the other hand, only focus on breaking speed records. This is justified by the fact that when the speedometer stopped working my enthusiasm to drive dampened substantially.  Brooks-off Bren prides himself in ‘aerodynamecy’; explaining why whenever he is on watch, the bright red Speedo can be seen. 

Mom is our secret weapon, and as a past national dabchick champion takes the helm, the boat starts to fly.  It is quite humorous to watch her pretending to listen to the pointers from her world champion offspring.  Michaela is one of the fastest helms (if only we could get her on there for more than 30minutes), and Kax takes the helm when the going gets tough. 

Slick Rick has gotten to a point where he can even helm from down below. Even if you lose concentration for one second, you will hear Ricky bellowing from below to sail the boat properly.  There was one instant in where in his sleep he shouted "Ryan or Michaela steer up, we're going slowly!"  It was slightly flawed as neither was driving at the time, and Brennan rather took great offense to the criticism. 

We are overjoyed with dad’s great plan to marry Kathryn off to one of the princes on the Maserati boat.  Truth be told we've been trying to marry her off for a while, but her lack of cooking skills has been an issue.  We think, however, that marrying into royalty will relieve her of any culinary obligations.

We hear word that our fellow competitors are complaining that the light breeze, and thus delayed ETAs, might see them run out of food.  We have no such problem.  In the previous race anything over 23 days would've resulted in us having to eat Michaela.  Our current stock take suggests 31days before we would even need to consider it. Our 8kg challenge (losing 8kg during the trip) has also become invalid, with us likely to land heavier than we left. 

For those of our friends who are low on rations, snacks can be found in abundance.  Flying fish are to the South Atlantic what Impala are the Pilansberg.  Squadrons of them glide through the air, land on your boat and wait to be eaten.  Flying fish bokkoms - a real South Atlantic delicacy. 

Ryan.