34° 58' S, 117° 52' E -- Pre Leg 4, Albany, WA

I made it to Albany in time... which is more than I can say for my boat. After some problems early on out of Cape Town, the team had climbed back to ninth place, fighting for eighth, when they took a gamble, broke away from the rest of the fleet, and tried to get around an area of light winds. It didn't work. Instead, they ended up completely becalmed and had to fire up the engine just to get in two days before the start of the next race and a day-and-a-half behind the next-to-last boat. At the time, I liked the idea of taking the risk, and while I know hindsight is 20/20 and all that, when something fails this spectacularly, you have to wonder if it was foreseeable. In any event, I wasn't actually out there. Talking to people when they got in, opinion was mixed. The move doesn't seem to have had full buy-in from the crew, and a few people think they didn't even have a say, much less a chance to get out-voted. Other people are just looking at it as one of those things that happens and a learning experience. It remains to be seen how it actually plays out in the next races.

As mitigation, I told the guys they didn't really need more than two days in Albany anyway. It's a nice enough town, but there isn't a lot to it. We had the prize giving and a bit crew party my first night here. I hiked up one of the 'mountains' in town to the Desert Mounted Corps Memorial. Part of the road was lined with trees, each dedicated to an Australian who died in WW1, WW2, Korea, or Viet Nam. I didn't manage to make it to the ANZAC museum, but there are lots of markers around town about ANZAC and its role in Gallipoli.

We went out one day for a refresher sail. Most of it came back really well, but I know nothing is quite going to prepare me for being out in the open ocean except actually getting out there to do it. We had some dolphins alongside for a while, which was fun. We were out with LMAX, who have won two of three races so far, and I was hoping to get some sense from the skipper of what they were doing. Well, whatever they're doing, it wasn't apparent on that trip. He was pretty casual about everything, still getting us up to speed, but nothing that really stood out.

The race does seem to be a pretty big event in town. Sometimes local people would just strike up conversation about the race. Some people were spontaneously offered rides from the airport. When we were about to head out on the refresher sail, a woman stopped by with a box of pastries for our tea!

When our boat did get in, we spent a fair part of the last two days getting it ready to go out again. They had done a lot of cleaning while motoring back, but we had some to do to finish up. Then today there was more maintenance and packing up all the food for the next leg. For example, I spent about two hours peeling the labels off cans of food, then writing on them what's inside. The boat gets so wet sometimes, you can't rely on the labels staying on.

There was also disappointing news from two of the guys on the team, both of whom I knew from Level 4 training and really like, that they were cutting their race short despite originally planning to do the whole thing. Nick, an experienced sailor, decided he just didn't like the racing aspect that much, and it was too much time away from his wife. Even more, Tony has a five-year-old daughter that he was missing. He had been wavering back when we were training and had actually decided to cut back to Legs 1-4 before he even started. Both understandable decisions given their family situations -- I was more surprised they'd planned a year away in the first place than that they decided to cut it short -- but I'm sorry not to have them around.

One last note before heading out. Here's a picture of my bunk. One of my favorite comments on this trip, from James Ruthven, "Your cabin must not be very big." Well, no.

I have top bunk