Race 13 - Day 2
Skipper Report
24 July
Happy Birthday to you
Happy Birthday to you
Happy Birthday dear Lorraine
Happy Birthday to you
Hope you have a fantastic day and great lunch with the girls, am sure you'll have a ball and looking forward to celebrating with you Polly and Nick on Saturday.
Hello Team,
Sorry about that, it is Lorraine's day today, she does like a good birthday, as those that know her will second that. Today is a special one, but I will be a gentleman and not say which one, but it’s “So” easy to confuse some numbers with words.
So how are you this “big birthday” Tuesday? Everything on course or are we a little close to the wind at times? The last 24hrs sailing has been fantastic coastal sailing, with stunning coastal scenery of the west Irish coast. An almost full moon illuminated the night and there was a breath-taking sunrise this morning, magical. Long gone are the night sailing days of t-shirts and shorts, those are memories of previous Legs now. Racing is still very tight and the positions changing hourly, the battle for Virtual Mark Hutchings (Good morning Richard and Maeve Hutchings– very nice of you both to give us such a challenging mark to get round), was eventually won by PSP Logistics (Morning Matt and Team) Now we continue south wards making BCW (Best course to windward) to see if we can pass VM Fastnet before the big low pressure system comes in tomorrow.
Lunches have started very well, with an excellent sausage stew, with handmade sausages and fresh veg all being served up with Beanie and Sandra, who were on Mother watch for the day. Already have great exceptions for today’s midday meal.
We have been “Nasducked” today during the bilge cleaning. There sitting in the bilges, was a small yellow plastic duck, smartly dressed in a top hat black tie, with the words “You've been Nasducked!” and Duck 1 written on it. So how many are there I wonder? It reminds me of a prank, played out in University, when a lad placed two snakes in his mate's study bedroom and left a note saying he left three snakes in his room :-) (Rob I am wondering if this part of the boat hand back procedure, we cannot hand the boat back until we can produce the correct number of ducks, well played guys.)
Some GREAT Britain stats for you to consider of afternoon tea and some cake maybe. Race start time 1400hrs (BST) distance run 121nm, DMG 101nm (83%) and we had 729nm to the finish line.
Now today's “Did you know” comes courtesy of Ross and is pure genius, and yes, he is. Emily you'll be doing this with the boys I am sure. You can measure the standing wavelength of your microwave oven – wait for it. By taking the rotating plate out and placing marshmallows in neat rows on the base of the oven then give it a short zap. As the marshmallows don't move, and the standing wavelength clearly has a set length the marshmallows only cook in certain rows. Brilliant, he also tried to explain how to work out the speed of light using a micro wave, but that was beyond me and am so excited to try the marshmallow trick out. You see every day is a school day on a Clipper 70 – Great.
Yes, your right team, there is a little bit of an end of term feel to GREAT Britain at the moment, but with some serious weather forecast set for Wednesday, there's still a lot of hard sailing to do yet.
Standing by this Channel-out
Dave