Cape to Rio 2020

Crossing the finish line of Cape to Rio 2020 After an absolute roller coaster of a ride in the final 24 hrs of the race, the crew have finally settled into Rio de Janeiro! It's not over yet though, we have lots of work to do in cleaning the boat and doing repair work to hand it over to our delivery crew. At prize giving last night we received a new award in the race for Tales at Sea. We arrived less than ... Read more

Day 30 - Saturday 2 February 2020 It is with great sadness that we announce our decision to retire from Cape2Rio 2020. When we first realised that we were in a race against time, the crew agreed to keep racing until the last possible moment. With 62nm to go until the finish, and after countless analysis of the weather forecast and boat speed calculations, we reached the conclusion that it would be impossible to cross the finish line within the time limit. We started ... Read more

Day 29 - Saturday 1 February 2020 By Joshua Jackson On Day 25 of our crossing it became one of the more memorable days of our journey to Rio. The day started with Dom, Max and Ewan waking me up 30 minutes before my watch at 00h00 as they were scared because there was a black bird flying around the boat crowing. It was that same night and watch that there was no wind at all and Mika and I only managed to ... Read more

Day 28 - Friday 31 January 2020 By Dominic Hollling Ewan and I had a double night watch which was hard, going to bed late and knowing that the next time you are woken it’ll still be night. However, this does have some upsides; we get to experience the sunrises every morning. The sun comes up painting the clouds in a golden and pink lining and reflecting on the ocean, stretching for miles. Last Sunday when may shift came to an end I picked ... Read more

Day 27 - Thursday 30 January 2020 By Nicholas Chapman and Daniel Skriker We recently spent a day bobbing along in hardly any wind and chose the opportunity to swim around the boat to get some much needed exercise and take our minds off the thought of not managing to make it to Rio before the race cut-off time on Sunday. We also noticed that the yacht Indulgence which was at a lower latitude than us and which we thought we had overtaken ... Read more

Day 25 - Tuesday 28 January 2020 By Max Elsworth Night watch was cool last night because we had bioluminescence for the first time in a while. The clouds were also gone, so we could see the night sky again and enjoy it with awe. Waking up to the sound of the fishing reel spinning was music to our ears and we all jumped out of bed and ran to the reels (even the vegetarian) only to lose the fish to a big ... Read more

Day 24 - Monday 27 January 2020 By Nicholas Chapman Daniel and I were quite tired today after staying up on watch to supervise the rest of the crew with flying of the spinnaker through the night in stronger breezes. Thankfully nothing went wrong and we were able to have a relatively peaceful night. It was really dark though with the rain clouds gathering overhead blanketing out the stars and moon which usually light up the surroundings nicely. The sky over the ocean ... Read more

Day 23 - Sunday 26 January 2020 By Dominic Holling and Mika Wessels By Dominic Although it is one of our less regular activities, clothes washing do still occur. Whoever takes it upon them to do the washing does it for everyone. Lunch is usually the time where we all get together and have a chill time with the whole crew. Since we have been running low on gas, we can no longer make our bread, a highlight of the day. So we have ... Read more

Day 22 - Saturday 25 January 2020 By Nick Chapman and Max Elsworth We've been progressing nicely staying close to the 20 degrees latitude line for the past few days and altering course slightly to optimise our speed with the changing wind which was blowing at between 12 and 15 knots most of the time. Late yesterday we spotted the Ilha da Trindade islands (admittedly from the top of the mast thanks to Ewan and then Josh who went up to confirm it). ... Read more

Day 21 - Friday 24 January 2020 By Daniel Skriker & Matthew Williams Our previous blogs have often spoken about our daily routine and life onboard so we thought we’d unpack exactly what this entails a bit more. We work on a rotation of 2 hours on watch and 6 hours off. The watch partners are Daniel & Matt, Josh and Mika, Nic & Max and Ewan & Dom. While on watch, the crew are responsible for steering the boat, trimming the sails ... Read more