Day 11 – Wednesday 15 January.

By Grant Chapman.

We sailed into doldrums weather at about 11:00am and sat in pretty much windless conditions for the rest of the day. This was very odd as although we knew the wind would drop the GRIB files indicated at least 5 knots of wind and the barometric pressure was still at 1017hPa, indicating we weren’t at the centre of the high. Fortunately we were in a reasonably strong current by now that was pushing us along at a few knots. Before the wind dropped we had a bite on the line by a reasonably-sized fish but lost it off the lure quite quickly.

We took the opportunity to indulge in general frivolity and most of us went for a swim in a very still sea. Ashwyn treated Marcus by fixing him some dreadlocks and Cathleen read several chapters of The Blood Stone to Lorraine and Ashwyn who were transfixed by the story of a Venetian jeweler who travels to Hindustan to try and save his father who had been imprisoned there.

Ashwyn conducted interviews with all of the crew on his video camera and had everyone in stitches when Chris pointed out that while he was conducting his interview with Lorraine the footage included Peter relieving himself off the side of the boat in the background, as was customary for all the chaps to do. Several of us played rummy with cards that had seen better days as they had gotten soaked in the storm and were somewhat worse for wear, which didn’t stop Virgil cleaning up the table as he revealed a clearly misspent youth.

We noticed from our position report that not much had changed and that Maserati had already arrived in Rio in a scorching race record time of 10 days 11 hours and 29 minutes. From the position reports of the other racing boats it seemed that their closest competitors were a good couple of days behind them.

For supper we had really spicy hot chilli pilchards with rice prepared by Ashwyn that had everyone reaching for drinks to quench the fire in their mouths. Top deck chocolate also helped to soothe burning lips and there were some inevitable grumbles about not looking forward to the chilli working its way out of the body the following morning.

A very gentle breeze picked up at sunset but not enough to stop our sails from flogging back and forth over the gentle swell as we drifted in the current under a full moon and clear skies, hoping that the wind would start picking up again some time soon.