Hi all,
Not much has changed since we last chatted. Well, we got even further north, but yesterday afternoon, after our lunchtime meeting on deck, we finally gybed and started heading towards Oban, which feels great. During the meeting I gave the crew three distances, with these being 421miles, 515 miles and 831 miles, asking them to guess what destinations those were. They got them right, 421 miles being Iceland, 515 miles being Greenland and 831 miles being Oban, Scotland. We all had a good laugh and I assured them it was all in the plan and that we were going to gybe towards Oban straight away! Just shows how far north we have come up.
Will it pay off?? We would need to get very lucky through the high-pressure system after the Ocean Sprint to have any chance at catching the front of the fleet, but this route does give us a very good chance at Ocean Sprint bonus points, and the sailing is mainly great downwind sailing now so can't complain either way.The other issue now is possibly missing the South Africa vs Ireland rugby on Saturday if we don't get tied up by the weekend, plus a whole bunch of other amazing sports on this weekend that we have all been talking about for some time...like the football final and Wimbledon finals, aaahh...
Life on board is still great, positive and it feels amazing going at a fast average towards our destination after climbing north for so long! The galley is smelling like a good French bakery at the moment, crew are enjoying the spinnaker conditions outside of their warm sleeping bags and we are all motivated to sail as quickly as possible to Oban.Sunset is very late and sunrise very early, during the night tonight it didn't really get completely dark which was fun for everyone to experience.
17 days until Race Finish!
Bye for now,Ryan, Charlie and Dare To Lead Crew