Race 13 - Day 3
Crew Diary - Derry-Londonderry, Northern Ireland to Den Helder, Netherlands
20 July

Kirsty Mohun-Smith
Kirsty Mohun-Smith
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As I write this, we are leaving the Aberdeenshire coast behind us and sailing upwind, but not slamming yet, down towards the rest of the fleet and Den Helder. It is not freezing cold, although we do need our layers on, but the moon is stunningly bright and vivid ahead of us. On our port side, the skies are painted in pale shades of pinks, reds, light blues and mauves and look like they have been taken straight off a Paul Klee canvas. What an absolute privilege to be here.

We were treated to the most spectacular day yesterday, as we made our way across the top of mainland Scotland, with the Bens clearly visible on the mainland. As we emerged from our wind hole and tacked across the Pentland Firth towards Orkney, the eddies were stunning and the water boiled around the edges of a calm centre, which resembled plate glass. The last time we had seen boiling water like this was in the Bass Strait, coming up from Tassie to Sydney, when we also encountered water spouts! No water spouts today, as loads of huge jelly fish blobbed past, some true Scottish seaweed and a random seal. John Finn took an amazing shot of Unicef, GREAT Britain and IchorCoal with Scapa Flow as a backdrop. Truly awesome sights. We weren't sure whether Garmin would make it out of their wind hole at the other side of the small island they'd gone through in time for the tide change, which could see them travelling backwards at a rate of 9 knots.

As we turned the corner into the North Sea, we ran into another mini wind hole, but soon tacked out of that. Stewie (Woods - Leg 8) told us that the stick thing on the end of the cliff in front of the church on the cliff was John O’Groats. I'm not convinced and being someone who deals only in evidential matters, this is a problem given that we can't find it on the charts. Stewie indignantly maintained that he knew his Scottish heritage well enough to know. I have emailed my son for confirmation.

So as we now prepare for the end of the race of our lives, a number of our crew are looking forward to their families arriving from overseas. Eli has Oka arriving from Israel, Big D, Chewie & Wendo have Jen, Chris & Jason arriving and we are of course looking forward to seeing the beautiful Renee

- MWAH! And then our UK based crew, who are also expecting a whole load of people in London for the finish, including past crew members. We are all excited to see you and could not have made this trip without your support.

You rock - all of you.

But for now, we are concentrating on getting to Den Helder quickly and experiencing some fabulous Dutch hospitality.

Love to all at home - you know who you are.

Kirsty

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