Resolute of Thames - WCC and The Hunger Games

The wind has returned. We have been privileged to have enjoyed a NNE or NE for the last 4 hours and I know it will remain - at least until I publish this.

Before we left Las Palmas,the WCC yellow shirted bods asked boats to carry items to St Lucia for them. With just the 2 of us on board this was not a problem for us so we offered space. One of the team duly arrived clutching a very large robust bright yellow transit case for the famous Yellow Bricks that enable you to see the green dot. Given the robust nature of the box it was agreed that it could be carried on the stern. I spent the next few days explaining to all the ARC (rather than ARC+) boats on our pontoon that it was the battery pack for the Yellow Brick and that it had been put in that case because I had refused to stow it below. A number came back for a second look and a fellow Moody owner was so incensed at he size of it he said he might not now have a Yellow Brick at all! However, that is but an aside, because written on the big yellow case on the stern in very small print is "Trophies Leg 2". Gilly-mate spotted it a few days ago in one of those many quiet moments produced in a sailing boat with no wind. In another such moment today, whist I was re-calculating our ETA and coming to the conclusion that we would, unless we get some good wind soon, physically miss the prize giving, Gilly-mate examined the box more closely and yes it does contain about 10 assorted plaques and other stuff. One is grandly engraved 'first across the finish line'.

So I dispatched an e-mail to Rally Control (AKA The Game-Makers) asking if they realised they had a potential problem. Not had a reply yet but within an hour of its dispatch the wind filled in and we are now, for the first time in nearly a week, making meaningful progress toward our destination.

Skook, another slower yacht nearby, is organizing a waifs and strays party for us stragglers. So if the wind drops again and our ETAs drop back to after the 11 December I will re-engrave the big plaque to read "First to cross the finishing line after it closed" and the others I will drop over board one at a time every 4 hours until the game makers adjust the wind machine to a more suitable place and speed setting again!....perhaps I am taking this Hunger Games analogy a tad too seriously Gilly-mate suggests!