Day 24 – Tuesday 28 January

Day 24 - Tuesday 28 January. By Grant Chapman. The weather Gods must have decided to start smiling on us because we had superb winds all day and through into the night with a steady breeze of 15 knots and gusts of no more than 20 knots. Such benign conditions allowed us to keep the spinnaker up permanently on a broad reach while we barreled along at over 8 knots of boat speed. Even the sea was working in our favour as a ... Read more

Day 23 - Monday 27 January. By Grant Chapman. After a morning of fairly iffy winds pushing us along at no more than 4 knots we started experiencing stronger winds come lunchtime and our speed picked up nicely to a more respectable average of 6 knots. Our daily position report confirmed what we knew already – we had only managed a woeful 121 nautical miles again so the freshening wind was a breath of fresh air for us all. As the afternoon wore on ... Read more

Day 22 - Sunday 26 January. By Grant Chapman. The morning started off with promising winds but they never strengthened to more than 12knots throughout the day which proved very frustrating as we were all well aware of what speeds were required to make Rio in time and we were simply not achieving them. We would later discover that we only managed to do a total of 112 miles for the whole day which was pitifully short of our required 145 and what ... Read more

Day 21 - Saturday 25 January. By Grant Chapman. The wind blew from the east for most of the morning, giving us a good start to the day with gusts up to 26 knots while we had the big bag up. We eventually took the bag down at lunch time when the wind became blustery and started coming from the north east, making the spinnaker uncontrollable, especially as we were running across the swell to maintain our position north of some less favourable ... Read more

Day 20 - Friday 24 January. By Grant Chapman. After a good start to the day with decent winds we started getting only 5 knots of wind again and were wondering if we were ever going to get to Rio when the wind picked up again and we managed to achieve a total of 114 nautical miles for the day, which although less than we needed was better than we expected. We continued to sail on good winds into the night and were ... Read more

Day 19 - Thursday 23 January. By Grant Chapman. Frustratingly low winds again and only managed 120 miles for the day – we needed 150 miles each day and every day we dropped miles we would battle to make them up again. There was much cursing of both Poseidon and Neptune, making sure that both the Greek and Roman mythological Gods understood our sentiments. Our daily position report put us bunched together in our class so all of us had taken much the same ... Read more

Day 18 - Wednesday 22 January. By Grant Chapman. We started to enjoy good winds mid-morning and were averaging a reasonable 6 knots with the purple spinnaker that we had only just put up a couple of hours earlier after the wind backed to a direction off our stern, allowing us to go on a run. After a good few hours of some decent sailing for a change we seemed to be out of the doldrums and making good progress to Rio. We ... Read more

Day 17 - Tuesday 21 January. By Grant Chapman. After a morning spent in iffy winds of no more than 8knots the afternoon proved more promising with winds gusting up to 15 knots during sporadic squalls. With each squall we also received a brief drenching as the heavens emptied bucketfuls of rain onto us. Judging when to start bearing off and manning the spinnaker sheet to depower the big purple bag became more of an art than a science with good timing providing ... Read more

Day 16 - Monday Evening 20 January. By Grant Chapman. It was Lorraine and Grant’s turn to be on watch for the graveyard shift and they resolved that they would try and identify some of the stars that were making their steady progression across the night sky, considering that Grant was busy learning his celestial navigation during the voyage. With only the occasional slurping sound of the water under the hull to disturb the peace and all the lights on board switched over ... Read more

Day 15 - Sunday 19 January. By Grant Chapman. Some time mid-morning we noticed that the big purple spinnaker was torn and needed to be taken down and repaired. The damage was probably inflicted during the broach. While we effected repairs we hoisted the white spinnaker instead which as well as being heavier had narrower shoulders than the purple one so delivered less power. Crossing the 130 meridian meant we were now also over the half-way mark of the Atlantic (not the whole race ... Read more