Race 12 - Day 8
Crew Diary - New York, USA to Derry-Londonderry, Northern Ireland
28 June

Bruno Roussennac
Bruno Roussennac
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The day I lost my clog

That day started with a small dot on the horizon in front of us, Derry our main competitor, no whale sighting as of yet and 2 of my favorite clogs `Crocs` on my feet.

We have been chasing Derry for days sometimes gaining, sometimes loosing on them and they were 9 miles ahead of us. However I knew something special was going to happen this day, since a small pod of jumping dolphins visited us and since we had a delicious breakfast with French toast (pain perdu) prepared by Marine and Junior.

The wind was easing and we were swapping between Code 1 spinnaker and Windseeker but we were making much better speed than our competitor which had just appear on the AIS system (system informing speed and direction of a boat and having an emitting/receiving range of 6-8 miles). In fact we were doing much better and we were catching up 1 mile every hour!

We did not losey76 any occasion to make even more progress and we were gybing at every favourable wind shift.

The evolutions were executed swiftly and successfully except for one that was slowed down by a magnificent orca a few tens of meters behind the boat.

Too bad for our skipper, but for me wildlife is more important than racing.

It was so nice to see the orca, that I lost my balance and lost one of my favourite footwear: my beloved clog `Crocs`.... snif snif...

Still we gybed successfully and continued gaining. So much that by mid day we had already passed Derry, and to add to the celebration a 10 meter whale came to investigate our boat. According to Axel and his great `Whale and
Dolphin` book it was probably a Northern bottle nose whale.

Now there is a small dot on the horizon 11 miles behind us, a great deal of marine wildlife spotted and only one clog at my foot.

Oh what a day!