Race 13 - Day 2
Crew Diary - Derry-Londonderry, Northern Ireland to Den Helder, Netherlands
19 July

It’s the penultimate everything. An ominous grey day with dark shades of land evaporating into the heavy overcast skies with a fleet of yachts with spinnakers up storming in behind us. We're in viewing proximity of the whole fleet.

We dived into action at watch changeover in the night, as the race started at 1800 the day before. No time to transition and get into the swing of things, it was all snap, crackle, pop.

The grey and drizzly day stole the memory of the sun away from us, though it’s really only been a little more than 24 hours. Scotland has finally rewarded us from 0200 this morning with the graduated palette of the Northern latitudes and the long light (when sky manages to pervade the solid packet of cloud cover).

Along the coast and approaching Pentland Firth before the tidal gate closes and works against us, we have been sailing North remotely with the terrain haunting us from afar. This watch changeover greeted us with the orange tungsten filaments of a coastal village at the tip of the land. Wind turbine fields in strict regiment on the mound ahead, blades lazily spinning as our fleet is a stand still.

If only you could see the detailed squiggles of all the boats around us. The hourly updates on the Race Viewer don't show you how all the boats are intermittently pointing in all directions. Some gybing every 10 minutes zig zagging east, while all our other tracks are worse than frazzled hair.

After racing to third, parking up almost last, we're now manoeuvring ourselves back up.

What a race to go through before Den Helder and ultimately, home. Bang on upwind through the oil and gas fields and to another small town invaded by Clipper Race crew.

I remember that long summer drive with my Dad up and down from London to the Isle of Skye, twice in a week. Wanting to go to the very tip of Scotland, John O'Groats, the very extreme of the mainland and now just casually sailing over the top in between islands. Though we were off watch while sailing through the all hyped up beauty of the Pentland Firth, the Orkney and Shetland islands will have to wait. The allure of the remote fringes of existence are always so tempting, to have explored the route less travelled.

Team Trucie/Tradi have served us fresh good burgers today for sustenance. As we depart the good port of Derry that was lovely in its own ways, with fairs and carnivals. We also crave the familiar and look forward to what has been an adventure we still can't believe we've almost finished. It always seemed like we'd been living on CV30 forever, natural that this was the way we lived, port in and port out.

The sun is back out now and sailing in company.

To Den Helder and the resource rich North Sea,

Tzen