Day 7 - Greenwich crossed!

 

So we have crossed Greenwich Meridian! Crossing this imaginary line is quite significant to us because it marks approximately one third of our journey so far. The first third is generally regarded as the toughest part of the race, and this year the reasons were plainly evident.

 

Crossing Greenwich also means that we have started making good headway in the westerly direction, and I think that we have crossed it far enough north to stay in the trade winds and out of the South Atlantic High for now. That points out the next milestone we are about to reach - which is reaching the Latitude of Rio. This means our results will start to be comparable to the leading boats, who have already done most of their northern haul.

 

We are making very good way at the moment, we have the big zebra kite up (still to be named) and getting in a couple of great surfs when good waves present themselves. A good surf almost doubles our speed on GPS for a couple of seconds, which is a valuable contribution to our average speed (and few other boats surf as well as this one does!)

 

Our Greenwich celebrations were enhanced by Michaela making her first batch of Crumpets, which was a great contribution to the morale on board! The food this week has been great in general (by racing yacht standards) with our dry-ice and most fresh food only running out now.

 

So that leaves us with two weeks of eating a variety of preserved foods something that student life has easily prepared a few of us for! Motivation to get there quickly will increase from now on as the cravings for fresh produce start to kick in. Maybe that's why some of the professional teams eat preserved food right from the start!

 

Thanks again for all the messages, we take great pleasure reading them out at the end of each day.

 

Ricky