I was on the helm a few nights ago as we cracked the 1000 nm mark. I had
this whole post composed in my head about how it the home stretch, about
how 1000 miles is still a long way but in the context of a 5700 mile race,
not to mention nearly 20,000 miles of total sailing I'm doing in this trip
it's not much, about how I could almost taste that beer waiting for me at
the finish.
That feels like an eternity ago.
We're generally making good progress, but conditions remain tough. I keep
going on about the cold, but that really has been the most testing aspect
of this whole experience for me. We had another breakage yesterday, which
slowed us down for a while. The shackle at the top of the running backstay
failed, and it was several hours worth of work to get it replaced,
including two guys going up the mast and dropping all sails for a while. I
was on mother duty at the time, so I missed most of the action, just
keeping dinner and hot drinks going as semi-frozen people would come down
from time to time. The one moment that sticks out for me is hearing Matt
say at one point, "There is every chance this mast is going to come down!"
Fortunately, it never came to that, and by the time I came on watch at 2am,
we were ready to shake out to full main.
We have one more front forecast to come through. It was expected to be
pretty strong, but the forecast has moderated, and now it looks like it
might just give us continued good speed to the finish, likely some time
tomorrow night. Not going to count any chickens just yet though.
336 nm to go.
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