A watch blog
Day 8 of the Bluejay Big Brother experiment and we are in fine spirits. We have developed into a finely tuned, sun tanned and muscled sailing machine, determine to outpace with our closest rivals in the race, our colleagues from the other Rubicon 3 boat, Hummingbird. The talk is of little else, where is Hummingbird now - how far behind, in front, to the north, to the west, east or south of us are they? We are not entirely sure whether the crew of Hummingbird has the same competitive intent but we can't take any chances. That is why we were delighted to see that we arrived just in front Hummingbird at our fuel stop in Cape Verde, where we took on more diesel just to make sure that we were covered for the remaining 2,100 miles to St Lucia.
After some jockeying in the fuel queue where both Rubicon 3 crews watched each other's backs to make sure no-one jumped in front of us, we had a very quick turnaround and were back out with the race on again. Hummingbird took a more northerly route, while we headed south-west, on 245 degrees, seeing winds up to 25 knots and for one brief instant a boat speed of 11 knots although 8 knots was a more consistent average.
Two celebrations over the last 24 hours. The first and most important was Nic Day's 37th birthday which we celebrated in the customary style with a card and a cheery rendition of Happy Birthday to you.
The second and equally motivational was the sound of Chico the Cicada (for that is what we have named him) chirping again last night. We were beginning to think he had mutinied and left the ship, so it was a real boost to hear his dulcet tones start as the moon rose high over the boat.
The weather has been hot and clear and we are a happy crew due in a large part to the great support and guidance we have received from Manu and Holly, our first mate and skipper respectively. Roll on the next 12-14 days and we wish fair winds to Hummingbird (but slightly less fare than for us).
Andrew, Robert, Anders and Angus (A watch)