Race 11 - Day 8
Crew Diary - Panama to New York, USA
08 June

Colin. It's an innocuous name. The name of an innocent. It's the sort of name you might give a friendly basset hound. I have a good mate called Colin, and he's pretty placid. Apart from the one time he punched a bloke in the face for interfering with a relationship, but that's another story. So, anyway, Colin. Yeah. From his name, not the sort of bloke you'd expect to go around making trouble. And yet, we're just clearing up after a visit to his manor. Not that we knew exactly where he was hanging out as he tends to move around a lot. He rotates, if you will. Colin: the Rotating Tropical Storm. It has a ring to it.

We knew he was coming over us some time this morning, and he announced his arrival with big waves and strong wind. And then he dropped the visibility and made it rain a lot. We were alongside GREAT Britain at the time, having spent hours gradually reeling them in. But Colin made us exchange our medium weight spinnaker for a heavyweight. And then he broke the halyard so the sail dropped into the drink beside us and threatened to go underneath and wrap around our starboard rudder. GREAT Britain didn't stop to help; they just steamed off into the gloom while we wrestled the thing back onto the deck and down the hatch. That took a good few minutes. We reckon we dropped from fourth to seventh.

Then we offered Colin a Yankee and he pushed us along at up to 25 knots, and made us broach, so we thought better of it and took it down. Actually, the broaching thing was quite funny. We were within metres of the Ocean Sprint finish line and I was hunched over the helm instruments to take a photo of the exact time we crossed the finish latitude. As we tipped over on our side I had to clamber and cling onto the helming frame to secure my place on the boat, and simultaneously reach out over the instruments with my camera to capture the photograph. It came out pretty well, all things considered. Much better than the ones Dave Goddard took on Leg 6 when he was comfortably safe downstairs in the nav station and didn't have anything else to do but take a single photograph that might just have given us a win on the sprint during the Pacific crossing. I even got it on the correct side of the line, Dave. And it wasn't so blurred that it was almost impossible to read, Dave. Not that it will make any difference because we were well beaten by GREAT Britain who were close ahead when we both entered the sprint last night, but much further ahead when we finished this morning. Anyway Dave, we don't hold a grudge and we're looking forward to seeing you in New York.

And now it is the evening, and the sky has cleared completely; the stars are out; there is the fingernail of a new Moon. We're on a beam reach riding out the remnants of the messy chop that Col left behind him after he'd whipped the sea up into a frenzy.

A few of us enjoyed today. We felt we'd gone a bit soft what with having had weeks of flat downwind sailing under sunny skies. It's nice to be reminded that sailing can be a really unpleasant activity.

Everyone is well. To my knowledge, not one person puked today due to the dramatically altered motion of the boat. I'm impressed.

Until anon

Henry