| At sea. Volvo Ocean Race: ABN AMRO ONE in tight race for third |
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| Tuesday, 06 June 2006 | |
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Mark Christensen Watch Captain: Hard work out here and very frustrating. I guess this is what the rest of the fleet has been experiencing with us. You line up with a boat and they just sail past you. The first day we had the pleasure of being rolled twice by Brasil in a couple of hours. The other night the three Farr boats sailed away from us doing a knot quicker and today we had Pirates sail away at about half a knot quicker vmg. So where are we? About a quarter mile behind the Pirates. Overnight when the breeze filled back in again we lost contact with Brasil and Ericsson but are still in a tight race for 3rd with the other three boats. We are certainly exceeding our pre-leg predictions but unless we keep getting the park-ups it may be harder to stay with the three Farr boats. Right now there would be some frustrated Pirates. Stan Honey and Moose (Mike Sanderson) have been doing some excellent work dealing with the holes and more often than not we come out in the right spot, so far it has been saving our bacon. We have bigger problems to deal with now though in that the five day weather models, still don't have us at the finish and we have just about finished our 3rd of six food bags. During the next watch I will get Bob (Robert Greenhalgh) to divide the remaining food up into six days and the rationing will start. We should be alright on fuel as we brought 7 days of fuel plus 3 hours of motoring to get up the Maas River leading into Rotterdam. Gas for boiling water may be more of an issue and so it might be the end of the coffee and hot drinks. My wife, Janelle, would say that a little less in my diet would be a good thing and I can't really argue with that. Too many full English breakfasts in Portsmouth. The latest model run has us 110 miles from the finish, 12 hours before the in-port race is due to start. It may be a case of sailing to the start line of the in port race straight after we finish. Basically there is no real wind forecast between now and the finish, the max being 15kts tomorrow and we have two periods where it will drop below 5 knots for awhile. Yesterday morning we had a tired and hungry pigeon land on the boat, Jan caught it and put it to sleep (no he didn't kill it), the most amazing thing I have seen in awhile. We videoed it, so have a look for it. When it woke up, it then stayed on the boat all afternoon, eating crumbs and drinking out of a water container that Tony (Mutter) made for it. We thought that once it was well rested it would then fly away but darkness came and it slept in a corner at the back of the boat. At one stage during the night we passed within a couple of miles of a headland on the south coast of Ireland. We woke it up but it would have nothing to do with leaving and went back to sleep. This morning when the sun came up, it took off and flew towards the shore, 70 miles from where we picked it up and probably lucky to be alive, I can't imagine pigeons swim too well. Alls good aboard ABN One, happy to have 12 kts instead of the 0-6kts of the last 3 days, the sun is shining, and we will all be looking trimmed down when we arrive from our enforced diet. Cheers Crusty Sent: 05 June 2006 18:01 |
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| Last Updated ( Tuesday, 06 June 2006 ) |
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