EH01 - The day that never ended...

Morning all,

It was a mixed old day yesterday... firstly let me apologise that I am
writing this after about 30 hours with little to no sleep so please excuse
typos, poor grammar and brevity.

Since my last blog it has been a day/evening of two halves! Yesterday
afternoon was spent champagne sailing with the spinnaker full all afternoon.
All of the crew have now had plenty of practice driving with the kite up and
several are really starting to excel at it. We hardly dropped below 9 knots
SOG yesterday afternoon/evening and the crew were looking to push our VMG up
as always. As the sun started setting and we tucked into our first boil in
the bag meal of the trip (Swedish meatballs) the decision was made to fly
the spinnaker throughout the night under the agreement that everyone would
maintain 110% concentration to keep it flying. We are constantly aware that
the gap between us and the other leading boats is small so we have to keep
pushing 24/7. As we went into the night the conditions could not be better,
the moon was as bright as a floodlight and the breeze continued to give us
sold pressure in the kite. As the night went on everything seemed to be
going too well...

At about three o clock this morning someone turned the lights off. A bank of
large black clouds appeared blocking out the moonlight and bringing what can
only be described as a biblical amount of the wet falling stuff. In
anticipation of the wind that these squalls can often bring with them
myself, Andras and the crew readied dropping the spinnaker to change rig to
a poled out head sail. The kite came down smoothly and the headsail went up
poled out in the blink of an eye. I was a proud skipper...But in the true
fashion of offshore sailing, just as you think things are going well things
change. The change came in the form of the wind dying and proceeding to blow
from all points of the compass for about three hours. For those of you who
have been offshore racing, there is nothing more frustrating than doing
doughnuts and going no where for hours on end.

Then it happened. It has taken a while this trip, probably longer than usual
but the skipper (myself) had his first proper dummy spit. I mean proper toys
out of the pram, shouting obscenities at the sky, feet stamping, hair
pulling, door slamming, questioning the point of it all/ and or all of the
above at any given moment. For those of you who have witnessed a signature
Nick Joyce sailing rage you will understand. Whichever deity was in charge
at that given moment in time they felt the full brunt of my vocal rage.
Thankfully one of the crew made me a cup of tea and a boil in the bag chilli
and told me to go to sleep (it was 0600 by this point). Luckily shortly
after I had calmed down the wind filled in just enough from the south for us
to sail roughly in the direction of the Americas (which was good enough for
me at the time) and myself and Andras went to bed.

I woke up a few hours later this morning to glorious sunshine and the crew
shouting that we are back on course and the wind has gone aft... the kite is
back up and we are back to cruising along nicely at 7 knots. It is Sara's
birthday today so in honour of her the whole crew have had a saltwater
shower and as a birthday treat she can have her boil in the bag pouch dinner
in a bowl this evening! The crew are back in good spirits (and smelling
fresh) and the reggae is playing from the speakers in anticipation of an
ever nearing Caribbean.

That's all for now everyone, the whole crew send their regards to their
families and friends! I am about to go and pass out on my bunk!

Nick and crew

EH01
Global Yacht Racing