Oh well (sigh) - yesterday was by far our slowest day of Leg 2.
We sat bobbing about in light and variable winds whilst a weather front passed overhead. What had started so well with a neck-and neck drag race against Qingdao turned into a struggle to keep our good ship Nasdaq moving at all, never mind in the right direction.
It was some consolation to remind ourselves that the other boats around us were having the same struggle, but having blown apart our Code 1 (lightweight spinnaker) a couple of nights ago, we seemed to be even slower than them - as we saw when Qingdao and then Visit Seattle popped up on AIS for a while.
So, the Nasdaq crew learned and practiced a different set of sailing skills: delicate helming and trimming, much of it using the Windseeker, and the novelty of sitting on the low side of the boat. All in an effort to keep a 30+ ton boat moving across a sloppy sea state in gentle puffs of breeze.
At least we were able to open the hatches and change the (rather stale!) air below decks, although James Cole confessed to feeling rather uncomfortable being dry, having only recently become so well habituated to the nautical default state of 'slightly damp'.
Another novelty was seeing the normally wheel-shy Phil "Henri Lloyd" Wilkinson enjoying a 2-hour helm-athon, including a couple of tricky gybes, and our wee Scots 'Supergran' Alison Allister showing off her own helming skills in the less physical (although no less skilful) conditions. Her husband Charles, now happily making progress aboard PSP Logistics, please take note - and carry on dodging those whales!
We made use of the benign conditions to crack on with a few maintenance tasks - servicing and repairing the boat is just as big a part of ocean racing as helming, trimming or sail changes. Look after your boat, and your boat will look after you. It's also an opportunity to tick a few items off the jobs list for Cape Town, and so make a little extra sight-seeing (i.e.: beer-drinking) time in port.
Nasdaq Bistro chefs Andy "Mast Monkey" Greenough and our Russian bear Dima Tankov excelled themselves with a delicious chicken curry cooked from scratch over the course of the whole afternoon and using approximately 200 separate ingredients. It was remarked that they wouldn't be doing that on Leg 3, but everybody agreed it was far better than our Leg 1 curries - Aldi tins.
A level boat was thought to be the place to put our equine passenger through his paces. Dressage horse Tristan Da Cunha was picked up on behalf of my girlfriend as we passed by the island of the same name, and has been settling into his new stable in the lazarette, on a deep bed of shredded high-denomination banknotes (anyone who thinks boats are an expensive waste of time should try horses).
When TDC was exercised up on deck, however, we discovered an unexpected flaw in his dressage training plan: the deck of a 70' stripped-out ocean racing yacht is too cramped for some dressage manoeuvres. Whilst it offers plenty of opportunity for 'shoulder-in', 'flying changes across the diagonal' and the all-important 'reverse parking', the '10m circle at D' becomes an extreme sport when our deck is only six meters wide. We also struggled finding a lifejacket to fit him. Hope you appreciate our efforts Alison!
Happily, the weather now seems to be doing what Clipper Race's weather guru, Simon Rowell, told it to: the breeze filling in from the northwest has meant Windseeker down, Yankee 1 and Staysail up, and Nasdaq is off again.
I can once again hear the South Atlantic rushing past our hull as I sit in the Nav Station clicking away at my irritating on-screen keyboard, so I'd better head off and tell Port Watch to prepare for a Code 2 (mediumweight spinnaker) hoist.
Cheers, Rob